In Answer
by MyMadness
Summary: Bates negotiates his surrender under Anna's perceptive, healing touch. Follows our pair through much of WWI. Alternating POV. Ch20. The Final Chapter. Thank You! Sometimes predictions and promises just take a while. That's why it's good to be patient.
1. Chapter 1

Bates and Anna: In Answer.

_Author's Note: I wrote this quickly. It is not my usual style, but it is what fell on to paper today while I watched a lovely vid on YouTube. "Downton Abbey ~ Anna and Mr Bates" by Cherrycakesbaybee._

_January 2012: . I write fanfiction because I want good journeys with happy endings. I think people read what I write for the same reason. Real life is hard enough and often frightening, and while I want my stories to be realistic, I want the end to satisfy._

_I wrote much of "In Answer" while I was working nights at a facility for older adults and those with Alzheimer's. I have kids, and so my days were not only for sleeping, quite obviously. Writing Downton Abbey fiction was another world for me. I felt a wonderful kinship with the other writers at the Fanfiction website that I needed as I went through my chaotic and often sleep deprived days and nights. Much of "In Answer" was written on short breaks at the facility where I worked or actually plunked into my phone when I waited somewhere for the kids._

_The notable thing about my story is the format. The chapters alternate point of view, and are written in the first person, present tense. The story leads off with an account from John. This initial chapter, oddly enough, was going to be the extent of the story originally. Readers encouraged me to continue, and I was swept up in the mania and the love that is the Downton Abbey board. I ended up with 20 chapters._

_Thank you, dancesabove, for the edits!_

* * *

Anna walks with me down the stairs, the way she walks with me along the halls and roads. Always, she matches my strides. Flawlessly. She is a mirror that betters my imperfections. Our conversation and our footfalls take on the uneven-but-familiar rhythm of my broken body's gait.

I am happily blind in her. Laughing unbidden and unrestrained for the first time in possibly forever, I meet the landing with an unexpected, jarring step.

Would she know my embarrassment? Would she understand, when I am with her, my attention is unrepentantly hers?

It was too much to hope that it might escape her. Still, my vanity seems spare and unnecessary. She is, I am sure, an omniscient sprite who sees inside me all too easily.

Without a word, her small hand lands at my waist, confident and possessive. Her eyes smile her reassurance. Frightened for her, I take the half-step away to lean quickly against the wall. I don't want to breathe. But I have to wonder: Why do I think I can save her from me when she is the one in control?

Oh, Lord. Who is this passionate, benevolent woman-child-faerie whom you have sent? I would almost believe she is here in answer to a prayer I've been too proud to make. Don't let her touch me. She would own me, make me repent my solitude.

I look at her eyes, and I know it's far too late. I see the weakness I indulge because she makes me feel stronger by each day's end.

...

I know she wants me out in the dark of the kitchen yard, and so that is where I am an hour later. I pretend to be short with her. I tell her she wouldn't understand, but she doesn't even blink. Her eyes move over me. And in silence, remove the pretense and the lies.

We sit facing and too close on the crates William has unpacked, but not removed.

"Your gait," she says. "Do you feel it in your hip at the end of the day?"

I look bewildered, I know. I'm thinking of negotiating my surrender. Of handing her my soul. How can she in this moment possibly think of something so earthly and mundane? But I nod solemnly, amazed by her perception.

Is it second sight?

But then, if she has watched me as I have watched _her_ these months, I am hopelessly laid bare.

"Stand up," she whispers.

And her hand rides along my better hip as we rise. Standing now, we are close together, penned in by choice and the crates we had used to sit upon. She smiles up at me. Her look tells me she registers the intimate, unchaste quality of our propinquity. She feels it, too. It exists as something for us to enjoy, but only later. Somehow, it is a surety when I look at her.

But, later, when she needs me to go to her, it will seem impossible.

"Lean over here," I'm told, and a kinder sergeant never led me. I have my hands against the bricks in the dark of our hidden corner.

"Favoring your right leg," she tells me, "makes your left hip ache." I haven't the ability or the inclination to ask her how she knows, because her hands are on me full and forceful. She is under my coat. She holds me steady with one hand. Exacts her cure with the other. Strong fingers push at the muscles near the top of my trousers.

My head is laid on the rough bricks now, and she voices my moan. It is relief and healing and undeniably, desire.

When William calls her name from the kitchen door, she does not pull away. She leans in closer to me if only for a bitter second. Her arms embrace me, reaching high across my chest. She does this so quickly, I wonder if perhaps I've only dreamed it.

"Coming, William," she calls back, and her hands and I turn my tired body. She doesn't kiss me with her lips then. But with her smile and the fingertips that ghost across my mouth.

"You'd better go," I mean to say.

But the words that I hear escape me are more honest. "Do you know?" I whisper. _Do you know how much I need you?_

"I do, Mr. Bates."


	2. Chapter 2

_**Author's Note: This second chapter is from Anna's point of view, a few weeks after the first chapter. I had not actually intended a second chapter, and so I probably would have tweaked the first a bit differently if I had. **_

_**Warnings: I have tried to keep this tame. Tried to keep it 'T'. I have made a few passes over it specifically to remove the um, more incendiary things that crept in there. But there is more action here than in the previous chapter. The phrase 'make love to you' is used here in the old sense, which was not to engage in sexual intercourse so much as to engage in amorous activities.**_

* * *

How long will I wait? We've been companionable. I've been his ally. I've been a friend, if such a thing is possible between a man and a woman.

I have been as stoic as my youth and my feelings will allow. But I am not as strong as he. Certainly not physically. Not in any sense, perhaps. Because I cannot stand to love him and not belong to him any longer.

I thought we had reached a point of understanding, that night when I held him briefly to me, when he let me tend to his hip. But that was weeks ago.

I have to face that perhaps, more than seeing his better strength, I am seeing that I love him more than he loves me. Perhaps I love him in a way he will never be able to return.

... ... ... ... ... ...

"_What is wrong with Anna?"_ Only the dafter ones on the staff ask.

Mrs. Hughes knows the root of it, and so her conversation cuts close and quick.

"Do you want another post? Something at another house?" she asks, her head bent toward me with care. "Would that be simpler, dear?" She never mentions the reason, but we both know.

When I lie alone at night in that narrow bed, the words come too easily. "_I'm so undone,"_ I tell God. _"Lord, I feel like I'm going to die."_

Childish, childish, Anna. Daniel in the lions' den? The endless list of martyrs from a Sunday sermon, and _**you**_ are going to die from loving this man?

If not, why does it hurt like this? Why can't the hurting stop?

It was admiration first. Appreciation for his manner. A comfortable sort of companionship. Never pity, no matter what he thought.

Later there was a gentle attraction at noticing his strong features and the warmth in his eyes.

We've moved dangerously beyond that. Well, at the very least, I have.

I am ashamed that I should want him so badly. What hubris on my part, this belief that I always know best. For months, I have shamelessly told him what I think on every topic. And now I have told him that I love him.

I never should have done. Because he gave me hope in that moment when he did not rebuke me. On that road as we stood together, he did not give any reason why he would not be mine... other than that he was not at that point free.

And now, here I am, so self-assured, so arrogant, that I would subvert the Church, if not the good Lord Himself.

I want his marriage deemed over, so I can have him. And failing that, I simply want him. With shame, I can admit to wanting him most intimately.

... ... ... ... ...

It is quiet and dark, and we sit together on the crates in the kitchen yard. We meet here more often at night than we should. More often than he wants, I sense.

"We should go in," he says with a faint smile. But I ignore him.

"Over the months, over this past year, we've changed," I tell him, wanting him to agree.

"I know," he admits. He shifts, his body now telling me he would rather be inside, away from me, away from my words.

I run my hand over his to still him for a moment. And I pretend the connection will make him understand my thoughts.

_Can you feel it in my touch? Can you hear it in my pulse? What comes to my mind?_

_Intimate. That's the word I hear in my head. The way I look at you of late. Even the way I sit with you. It's all changed._

_The sound of your laughter travels through me. Lately, I can't even think when I notice the hair that curls at the back of your neck, or the lines at your eyes when you smile at me._

_Too many times I've leaned close at table. Close enough to feel the warmth of your breath at my ear. Sometimes it feels like I'm stealing. Stealing you._

_There is this list of the impertinent actions that I've taken to satisfy my need of you—and all these things, they are never enough._

_It is almost like a madness._

He understands something, I know, when I hear his next words.

"I don't want you to think I haven't tried to resolve this," he tells me at a whisper, as his hand encloses mine. "I have made inquiries," he finally says. "But my wife may have gone abroad."

"And if you never find her?" I ask.

"I can only do what is right."

"Right?" I nearly yell. I stand up, my anger is so hard to control. My arms are folded across me, my hands rubbing. I've suddenly gone so cold.

And finally, his face shows some surprise.

"Right in the eyes of the Church?" I ask. "Or society? What about what I know is right in my heart, John Bates?"

Still he is complacent. As he always is. The man is too forgiving about the world and what it would do to him. But as my words push at him, he is done with being patient. He bows his head and pinches at his brow rather than fight with me.

"Must you be so intractable?" I demand, as I prod him where his heart should lie. "Do you even know what it _feels_ like to love someone like this?"

As he looks up now, his breath is audible. Rough. His lips are parted and his face has changed. For a second, I wonder if I should move to step away.

"Do not doubt that I am capable of emotion, Anna. Such deep emotion." His voice is raw and almost hurting.

Suddenly he stands, leaving his cane to lean against the crates. His grasp is quick to take hold of my arm. He is firm, but gentle still, and I do not pull away. Instead, seeing the ache in his eyes, I lean in to kiss him. It is our first real kiss, and I am sure I am kissing him goodbye.

He shakes his head then. Almost violently. He is changing before me.

"What will make you walk away? See sense. Find the right man. A suitable man," he seethes.

"I hate you, John Bates. As much as I love you, I hate you that you would ask me that." I'm crying now and I pause to wipe forcefully at my eyes. "But you are right," I tell him. "I'll have to go soon." This has stunned him, I see, this notion that I would not just be gone, but quickly gone. "Mrs. Hughes wants me to go."

"Oh, Anna. I can't imagine this place without you." There is some emotion there, finally. But it seems little more than resignation.

"How am I supposed to just carry on?" I lament as I turn my head from him to complain to the wider world. "I shouldn't blame you. I said you were the best of men. And you are. Even if you don't love me the way I need you to."

He is frozen. Looking at me. Near hypnotized, as if he is seeing me for the first time. "Do you really think I feel nothing?" he demands.

"Not nothing. But not enough. It has never been enough, what we have. And it is over before it has begun." I had not known I felt quite that way. Perhaps I don't. But in that moment I am sure he can't be hurt, and so I throw these words at him.

"This once, Anna," he whispers intently. He traces my lower lip with his thumb. "But will that really help?"

I shake my head confused. I am even a little worried now. There is a change in him, and I don't understand what it is. "How long till you are missed?" he asks. His hands move down my arms.

"Ten minutes, no more," I tell him softly.

"Ten minutes. God help me. I have ten minutes to show you I would love you, if I could. This once? To make love to you, Anna. But do we want to set everything loose?"

I answer him with my hands and my mouth.

He is kissing me, and my hands are at his shirt. He stops only long enough to remove his jacket—to save it from the brick's marks or to free his arms; I don't know which. Reaching for me now, he settles his back against the wall and pulls me to him. With the strength in his arms, he lifts me to his chest. He is kissing me, and my feet only barely touch the ground. And I am crying.

"Tell me you love me?" I ask for reassurance.

"Lord knows, I have loved you so long," he tells me. And he kisses me again, as if he owns my body.

Deep and warm and overwhelming. Those are the words that flood my brain. In my inexperience, I can't keep up. He lowers me along his chest, so that my feet rest more fully on the ground. And his lips are in my hair. "Tell me to stop," he begs.

But I won't. I try to talk, to say anything, but the words are lost. Instead, I fist my hands in his shirt and pull. I am desperate to have my hands on warm skin; I'll not make love to a suit. As my fingers find the heat of his sides, he moans.

He shifts us to a crate, and I hear his cane fall to the dirt. He pulls me into his lap, his steady hands pushing up my skirt so I can move in tight against him.

"I've thought of how it could be, Anna. In my bed..." his voice trails off. His lips are at my throat, his fingers tease open three or four buttons. I am waiting. Frantic for the first liberties that will take me beyond anything I have known.

His touch makes me cry out, and I am embarrassed. Out of control. My vision swirls until I shut my eyes against the confusion. There is the heat and the friction and the pulse of my blood. All focused on his caress.

I touch him, too. I touch him and revel in the response I get. Guttural and determined. He is not asking me to stop now.

There are those limits we cannot escape. Time, the constraints of our clothes. The notion that we are no more than 50 feet from the kitchen's back door. But he and I work to serve some of the need this once.

... ... ... ... ...

We've gone still. First our hands ease and finally, our breath.

"I love you," I tell him, as I smooth his hair back where it belongs.

"I love you, too, Anna. But I don't know if that helps us."

"It might."

We shift until we are sitting side by side. My buttons are done back up again. We are holding hands, our fingers laced, like settled lovers, when we are anything but.

No doubt it has been more than ten minutes now. No doubt someone is wondering where I am. But before I am ready to hear Mrs. Hughes at the back door, pity in her voice, as she calls out for me, I will say this to this man.

"You and your wife were married in the sight of God, I understand that. But ask Him now why it isn't ended. Hasn't _**she**_ ended it, even in God's eyes, by leaving you?"

He didn't answer that question. Or couldn't.

"Six months. Give me six months to make this right, Anna. But please, don't go."


	3. Chapter 3

Anna sits next to me at breakfast, but she only stares straight ahead. She can't even look at me now. Jittery and in a hurry, she is up and gone from the table before anyone else.

"Anna?" Mrs. Hughes chides worriedly. "You might slow down before you knock someone over."

I'm trying not to watch the exchange. Trying not to unnerve poor Anna more than she is already. I've done this, I know. And I feel so much less than proud. I drop my head even further.

"I'm sorry," I hear Anna say, her voice higher-pitched than normal. "I'm just... I'll get an early start on..."

"Go on," the housekeeper says dismissively.

This is because of last night, I know. And I wonder: is it merely unease she feels? Having that physical secret? Having that knowledge that there is that hidden, shared element to us?

I remember being just married. And if I call it to mind with that moment's innocence, it is a good memory. I remember that newness and the nervous energy between us. That sense of _knowing_ that we had when we looked at each other across a filled room. We would see in our minds how we would be together, later.

And Anna has not likely had that before. She doesn't have it still, because what little she and I are allowed to share is a poor substitute for the fullness I would like to give her.

Perhaps it is more than the weight of the secret that she feels. Last night was passion and a year of rising want, and it felt good and right, there in the dark. But by day? In a woman's eyes? When I have nothing to offer, but the vague promise that I love her... All of this would bring on more than unease in her. Our actions may well ring cheap and tawdry to her.

I look up to see her leave. The best thing that's happened to me in forever, that is what I see walking out the door in that moment. And our positions make it impossible for me to put it right.

I lean over my coffee to avoid anyone else's eyes, and I ask myself: Does Anna feel some shame that she would let me touch her so intimately? Is she embarrassed that she would, unbidden, touch me? I know it is easy to regret even a thing done willingly. Too many of my mornings were like that after nights I'd spent drunk years ago.

She deserves better than a frantic episode while hiding in the dark. How could I have had my hands on her like that on a crate just outside the house? God help me, what sort of man makes love to the clock the very first time he has an innocent thing in his arms?

I realize then that I am shaking my head in silence there at the servants' table. I am that morosely lost in thought.

Even if I find she has no regret, how will we handle this change? It was too much and too quickly. And I feel it all still; all that raw emotion and want seems to simmer in me.

There is no going back. No changing what we've done. And by daylight with our work and the staff around us, she feels this, too, I know.

I hear myself sigh. I don't know how to proceed. At the very least, I should apologize for the setting last night, if not my actions.

I am up from the table now and wordlessly making my way to the stairs. I frame my thoughts with each tread I manage. If I could, I would explain that in my heart it had been a form of worship. My hands on her was a blessed insanity. To me, they were incredible moments when we could believe all things were possible. And when I kissed her, I could pretend that I could always be what she wanted and needed.

I doubt I can make her believe me. But I'll try.

Once in the upstairs hall I know I need to be quick, so I can meet her by Lady Edith's room as if by accident. I will have a spare minute or two if I can hurry.

... ... ...

I am ridiculously nervous as I enter that room. And it's because I know that even with all the medals that I've worn, I've never done anything more important than trying to reassure this woman now.

"Anna?" I whisper as I come up behind her. I try to convey something helpful in my smile. A softness and a caring that is safe from desire. I can't stand to have her think that I want her only for those moments. I take a deep breath and steady myself. "Is everything all right? Please, tell me."

She avoids my eyes. She doesn't answer me directly, but her sigh is quite audible. She merely moves to the opposite side of the bed to straighten it. I bend and pull my edge of the blanket higher, and together, as before, we make the bed.

"Don't worry about me, Mr. Bates," she tells me, her words purposely vague. "Everything's sorted. I can get this on my own."

"I'm sorry, Anna. If you are angry? Forgive me, please?"

It is an impossible conversation standing as we are on either side of a bed, of all things. I think she feels it too, because she won't answer me until she has moved for the basket of clean linens on the far side of the room.

"You must think me silly, childish, for the way I bolted at breakfast. That I am some foolish, forward girl who is in over her head," she whispers urgently as I come up to her.

"No. Never. I think you _**many**_ things," I assure her. "Never silly. And _**nothing**_ like a child. Oh, Anna. This is my fault."

She stacks a load of folded sheets on my arms as if I were her shelf. It is her way of making my presence seem less unnatural, I guess. Or of keeping a distance between us.

"I feel so... odd this morning," she tells me in an uncharacteristically unsure voice.

I look over my shoulder to ensure no one is lurking. "It would have been easier if we hadn't... You regret what we let happen," I try to suggest.

She laughs then, a full, knowing and ungirlish laugh. Her eyes are impish and unguarded. But she quickly turns her head to avoid my stare. "If I hadn't finally kissed you last night, I would have found it _**impossible**_. Not easier." She takes a step towards the dresser and stops. She is facing me, but offset, as if she has merely forgotten to walk past.

"But… I'm embarrassed, I suppose," she admits. "When I think about it... in detail. Because, it was certainly more than a kiss. And the circumstances... the risk we took."

"To be just outside like that... that was a mistake," I agree with a wince. "I would have done better by you. And it was not something we can repeat... in that manner. I won't risk your position here."

My stilted way of talking about something so intimate has worked a small smile to her face. I am a bit glad for that.

"And I worry," she continues, leaning a little closer until our arms brush. She drops her head. "I worry you'll think of me differently. Wrong, somehow because... Things made sense last night, but they seem strange now. You would have stopped. I don't blame you. Even though they were things I had never... I wanted you to touch me... They were improper things, some would say... but they did not feel at all improper."

Her statement has halted there, but the memories come full to mind as I watch her blush. I try to stop myself then from thinking of it. But I can see her in my lap. Feel her thighs at my hips. I am remembering the way she drew herself closer, pulling my head in even as I kissed her lower and lower.

My eyes, I am now shamefully aware, have drifted from her face to far below her neck line.

"You've stopped breathing, Mr. Bates," she accuses as she stares back at me. And she walks on.

I follow her, as if I am her servant. God, I truly feel as if I _am_ in these moments. I move with slowly, my arms loaded as they are with sheets, my cane over one wrist.

"Nothing of how I feel about you has changed," I whisper behind her as she opens a drawer. "I respect the woman you are. You are wonderful, Anna. And I love you. And I... kissed you last night, touched you, because of that. We are the same two people we were. All of that, last night... Do you remember what started it all?" I am doing a horrid job of explaining anything, I am sure. I look up to the ceiling in hopes that something more sage will occur to me.

She answers me then. "I accused you of not loving me, not loving me enough."

"I've never loved anyone like this, Anna..."

She sighs again. "I think what I _**do**_ regret is that I don't feel the way I was always told I should about behaving like that. When Mr. Carson looked at me this morning, it was like facing my father after last night. And I felt I _**should**_ be ashamed of the way I had acted. In the eyes of everyone in that room this morning..."

"They'd be merciless," I agree, too quickly.

"But ...I love you. Why do I think that makes everything all right?"

"I know."

She turns around to look at me. She would have liked to sink against the dresser in her emotion, I think. But she stands there in a dutiful position. Except for her hands. She reaches those towards me, as if she would touch me. But instead, she grips the edges of the linens that I hold.

"This morning with everyone there?" she tells me, "I felt like they could tell where I'd been last night. Tell what we'd done. As if everything was writ across my forehead plain as day."

I want her to know I understand. "There is _not_ regretting a thing," I tell her with a half-smile and hint of a lilt I cannot keep out. "That's easy in the quiet of your room. And then there is managing to sit there, _**thinking**_ on a thing and being sure that everyone can read your mind... and not being embarrassed, still."

She is smiling harder now. And I have to laugh as I ask her, "What could possibly be so funny to you just now?"

"You. When you get that little Irish warble to you, and you turn a phrase just so. I see your mother in it, now I've met her. And I believe I like that."

She lifts half the stack of linens from me and turns away with a hint of self-satisfied look about her.

"I trust you, Mr..." she begins.

"Mr. Bates," come Mr. Carson's thundering words. "Certainly, Anna could find another place to stack her linens?"

It is, of course, my reliable Anna who finds her voice first. "Yes, Mr. Carson. I'm sorry. I'm fine, Mr. Bates," Anna says with hidden meaning. And there is something of her old smile there, despite that hint of color in her cheeks. She retrieves the last of the sheets from my arms without any hint of awkwardness then. "I do appreciate all your help. Truly."

/ / /

It's been two mornings since we spoke in Lady Edith's room, and nothing more than pleasant conversation and a brush of our hands has happened since. It has been like torture to sit with Anna at meals or to pass her in the hallways.

I stand in front of the house with my eyes falling unfocused on the horizon, and I indulge in lamenting how long it has been without feeling her against me.

I hear her then. "I've been waiting for you, Mr. Bates," and it certainly seems as if she has been. She's appeared outside just as I've seen His Lordship off in his car. "I thought, perhaps, you would help me with some flowers for the rooms."

Of which she has none, I note. What she has is a basket meant to collect them.

"Flowers?" I ask, trying to sound doubtful and confused.

"Pretty little things? Petals and leaves? I'm sure you've seen them," she answers boldly.

"Those things in the far garden?" I ask, pointing a quarter-mile down the track.

"Yes, now you've got it."

"And what makes you think I would be of any help?" I ask, but I am already moving across the drive and down the path with her.

"A tongue like yours? I think you could charm them from the ground," she says, without sparing me a look.

"God help me, Anna," I tell her when I am able.

...

And when we are beyond the low stone fence, I hold the basket in my arms as she chooses and cuts each bloom. Her actions cannot help but seem seductive to me now.

She turns to me, and her hands arrange each flower with an excessive care that keeps her up against me far longer than necessary. And I'm not sure if it is the flowers I am breathing in or her, but my breath comes faster now.

"It takes some getting used to," she offers.

"It does? What does, Anna?"

"That this is us. And that that was us. The way we were the other night. That it can all somehow be the same people. What do you think... John?"

"I've never enjoyed getting used to anything quite so much."

... ... ...

We've lingered over our tasks in the garden as long as we could. We've allowed our hands to touch hidden by the basket, and we have worked together closely enough to brush up against each other repeatedly. This can't be prolonged anymore. She takes the basket from me as she accepts this, and we begin walking quite slowly for the house.

"Could you stop with me in the greenhouse, or am I asking too much?" she wonders aloud.

I look at her before I answer, and I know we are sharing a thought. It has been too long since I pulled her into my lap to feel her pressed up against me. It has been far too long since I have tasted at her skin.

"Quickly, Anna. But, I need to get back."

"I know. I won't even ask for ten minutes." She is a devil to say such a thing. But this is what we are left with, too often now. We tease and make love to each other with just our words.

Once inside the greenhouse, she closes the door behind us. She puts a hand to the small of my back and confesses, "But I do want to kiss you. I _**need**_ to kiss you."

That small embarrassed voice makes something in me give way. I pull her to the interior rows of plants where we will not be seen, and I immediately heed the impulse to wrap my arms around her. I kiss her as sweetly as I know how for a brief minute. I feel her loosen her hold on me then. She does it slowly, as if with regret.

I know she means to keep her bargain to let me return to the house quickly. She thanks me and turns around as if she would leave.

I take her by surprise then. (I am surprising myself, as well.) I reach for her and take a step closer as I draw her back. My hands are firm and possessive, but she seems to understand me. I know it, because she so willingly leans into me then. I take hold of her hip with one hand as she faces away, and I keep her there against me. I trace the back of her neck with a single finger of my other hand. And I am treated to her moan.

Already this has turned intimate enough to lose us our employ if we are discovered. But I won't stop. I press my whole body along her back then. My lips are to her neck as she bends it to one side.

"Don't," she starts to say after my tongue and teeth trail behind her ear. I draw back only to hear her finish, "Don't leave any marks, Love." Her hand reaches to grab me at my trouser pocket and she pulls me back in, snug to her.

Xxxxxxx


	4. Chapter 4

_**A/N: **__**This chapter is a strong T for adult people doing adult things as described obliquely. Hell of a rating/warning that, eh? And the middle-aged worrier in me feels I should just go ahead and switch the rating on this fic as a whole to M. What do you folks think? Have I been swimming in M waters already? Am I still safely T?**_

_**It is not that the content is going to get radically more graphic after this, just that if I switch the rating to M, I can stop sweating keeping what I write a T.**_

_**Let me know what you think of the ratings. I am worried I have crossed the line already.**_

* * *

I'm called to Mrs. Hughes' parlor one afternoon. I would love to think that she is only going to question me about a stocking gone astray or the state of the glassware, but I know what it will be.

"Have you given some thought to taking a position at another house, Anna?"

"Why would I want to go?" I ask, acting nervous and unaware.

"Do you find the situation with Mr Bates... ?

"Please, Mrs. Hughes. There is no situation with Mr. Bates." My voice is strained, I know.

"Anna..." she admonishes.

"I don't want to lie to you, Mrs. Hughes." _But I will, I know._

I take a deep breath as I take the measure of the woman in front of me. I pause to wonder if she would understand what I need to do. "I did rather fancy him a while back," I begin. "But he is not pursuing me, if that is your worry." I usually lie quite badly, mostly because I abhor it so. Still, I press forward. "And I know that what I felt for him was just a ridiculous, fleeting thing, really. There are no men of the right sort about, and he was just so nice and so much easier to talk to than anyone else. I suppose I imagined we were something we are not."

"Has he been harassing you while you've been at your duties? Mr. Carson said..."

"Oh, no. He's only friendly. We talk, about books and such. And if he is free, he lends a hand ...just quickly though." I bow my head then as if my next admission stings. "He doesn't see me like _**that**_. You know, the way a woman wants to be seen by a man she admires. He told me, quite plainly, that I should find a better man. One more suitable." And while I wait for Mrs. Hughes to speak, I am begging God's forgiveness as well as our housekeeper's.

"So, you are... recovered, then?"

I smile. "Oh, most definitely, Mrs. Hughes. I was just being silly, I'm afraid. I hope you won't hold it against me. And I hope you do not want me to leave. It isn't that I won't leave one day. But when I do, I'd like to take a Head Housekeeper position ...at a small house," I add, to keep my statement modest. "And staying here, I can learn from you. And better my chances."

My hands are clasped hard in front of me, and I picture myself in confession now, quite determinedly, as my sins mount.

Mrs. Hughes looks at me as if she is seeing me afresh. "I was a fast learner myself at your age. Not too much older than you when I got to manage a small household. I could show you how the accounts are run—that sort of thing—once a week or so."

"Oh, Mrs. Hughes, you are wonderful. Thank you." And I thank God that Mr. Bates has managed to not be part of the conversation for most of the last few minutes.

... ... ... ... ...

John has a book for me at dinner. He usually does, of late. And I seem always to have one I am ready to return to him. He places the volume in my hands rather than on the table, so that our hands can meet.

There is a page marked for me, and if I am lucky, there will be a note.

Once I am alone, I open the book to feel the paper where his hands have lain. In bed, I read the poem he's chosen, and I try to decide what it means. What it might mean to John.

'Ephemera,' it is called. Mr. William Butler Yeats was saying, I believe, that nothing good lasts. I finish the poem with a sigh.

John has his worries, I know. That his age or his leg makes him unsuitable for me. He worries that I will stop seeing him the way I do at present. I search the book, determined to find a better, happier poem. But as it is all Yeats at his most bleak, I soon give up.

... ... ... ... ...

As we move about getting things set for the staff's dinner two days later, Mr. Bates asks me, "What do you think of Yeats then, Anna?"

I wait to be sure I have his full attention, and I tell him, "I think he worried too much."

John smirks at first and then lets go of his beautiful laugh. There is no hope of it being suppressed. As the activity becomes prolonged, I believe his eyes are beginning to tear.

Daisy looks anxious, I notice. She is sure I will take offense at Mr. Bates' laughter, and that there will be more unpleasantness amongst the staff. I smile, and even wave a fork briefly while I scold our valet.

"Really, Mr. Bates. I had to look up every third word in that ...blasted poem—starting with the title itself—and by the time I figured it all out, it seemed there was a man who thought he was an old, lame rabbit." I'm enjoying teasing him. "You'll need to set me to plainer stuff, Mr. Bates. Or Lord Grantham will never have use of his own dictionary again."

"I'll find you something better," he says. But I hear so much more in the words.

"Not more Yeats, I beg you. Nor another morose Irishman of his ilk." I sneak him a wink.

Those are most definitely tears that John is now wiping away as he grins at me. And I feel so... buoyant and full. Maybe I know in that moment something of how those happier love poets felt. I think I fall in love with John a little more at times like this.

"You are a patient soul," he tells me. They are the words, the code, he uses to tell me that he loves me.

"I need to be, as you _are_ a bit of a trial, Mr. Bates." _I love you, too._

... ... ... ... ...

Later that night when we are alone, outside against the bricks, I kiss him and stroke his face. "You are _not_ a worn-out old man, John. Not in the least."

"Sometimes, I wish I was something different, for your sake. Not lame. Not old."

"Can you think that perhaps, you are this man I love _**because**_ of the things that you have seen and done and what they have made you?"

He kisses me in answer.

And as I fade back and pass my fingertips over his chest, I tell him with amusement, "Please. No more Yeats. Promise me. I can't stand it any longer."

His face is lighter now; I much prefer it that way. "I promise," he tells me. "Now go in. I'll see you in the morning. Unless you want to sneak into my room?"

I don't dare answer that wise bit of his. So he just gets another kiss from me then. And a smile before I turn away.

... ... ... ... ...

Come the following week, we have our half-day off. We work to meet out by the woods near the orchard. He began the journey down the track, ostensibly for town, a half-hour before me. When I catch him up, he is resting on the stone wall that marks the orchard's edge.

We have called this afternoon's activity a picnic, but we have not packed much for it (as, Lord knows, that would have drawn attention we could not afford).

He pushes off from the wall and gives me half a smile. He is nervous, I note. I brush at his mouth as if the full smile lurks there, and I might find it if I merely try. "All right?" I ask, quietly.

"Of course," he lies. I get a quick kiss then, and he leads the way around the wall's edge to the trees beyond.

He pokes at the ground with the tip of his cane, looking for somewhere dry for us to be.

"You are inordinately good at this, John Bates," I tease.

"A lifetime of luring women into the woods."

I say nothing, and he turns to see I have taken his words badly. It is horrible enough that he is someone else's husband, but I don't need to feel as if I am sharing him with a past full of lady friends.

John comes over to me, a look of regret on his face. He knows I am feeling jealous and insecure.

"If you knew what a solitary life I've spent, Anna, you would have seen the sad humor in it. An old soldier knows how to find the driest bit of ground, that's all."

"I'm sorry," I tell him. Because I've ruined it now. We are both thinking of his wife in this moment. Of the lack of resolution. Of the lies that it takes to get us alone.

"This spot looks good," he tells me with that smile that I've grown so accustomed to. He throws down his coat. There is a strange pause then. "I'll take off my tie, if I might. And get comfortable." There is a question in it. There is still an awkwardness between us about these things. And he worries, I know, that he will sound as if he presumes too much.

I find myself staring as he slowly works his collar open and pulls his tie loose. I've never watched a man undress, even in limited fashion. I am suddenly realizing it is far from a mechanical exercise at all. The effect is completely visceral, and I feel my cheeks go warm.

Without thinking on it, I've stepped closer. I reach up to finish pulling the tie from him, and I hold it while waiting for him to manage his collar. Silently, as I look up at him, I hold out my hand for the studs. Once I hold them, I pick up his coat so we can put everything he has removed in the pockets. I feel almost unwell. But very, very alive now, as I look up to see that he has undone three buttons down his shirt.

"The collar," he whispers. And I realize I've been staring and unmoving there in front of him. He's waited for me to relieve him of the collar and put it in the coat pocket as well. I feel odd, at best, to realize that the ten minutes of defining passion that we have previously shared did not include this type of simple intimacy.

"You are uncomfortable," he sums up.

"I am _**not**_ uncomfortable," I insist. But I think I've spoiled the assertion by swallowing hard before I finish my statement. "I am merely completely out of my depth," I joke then. I step to him, proving something to him. Or to me. I finish opening his waistcoat for him, and then I pass my hands inside it. Skimming my palms across the cool cotton of his shirt.

I draw myself in as close as I can to him and I imagine I can feel him all along my skin. With my eyes closed, I breathe in the starch and the soap, and all those things that make it him.

"The blanket," he tells me gently, to break our embrace.

As I move for the satchel I brought, I see the situation immediately. He has chosen a spot near a tree, quite deliberately. The poor, proud man contends with his leg well enough in the house and even across the grounds. But I am expecting him to get down on a blanket in the grass and then somehow up again on this outing. He is certainly capable of managing the feat, but he likely feels the effort will involve an unmanly display. Worse, should I offer to help, it may remind him of the fall he took in front of the house when his cane was kicked out from under him.

I turn my back and pull out the thin blanket I had packed. I work harder than need be to spread it out, giving him the time to lower himself using the tree trunk and his cane. I turn to see that he has managed it. He moves himself over to the center of the blanket, his one leg held out stiffly in front of him. And without waiting for him to get quite settled, I push lightly on his chest to have him lie down.

"Anna," he chides, gently. I am already curling at his side, and he puts his arm under my head.

"Do you mind being out here?" I ask.

"Yes. In a way. Because I hate that sneaking out to the woods is our only option for being together. I'd rather be out at the shops with you on my arm. Or taking you to tea there in the village."

"I... like it," I admit quietly. "I'm not exactly a woman of the world." He pulls me in tighter then, as if to console me over that. "I'm horribly simple, I suppose, because I can't imagine anything better than getting to lie snug together... to have no work to do for a while. To hold onto each other and talk together."

"I've seen more of the world than I intended, but I still can't think of anything better than waking up with you."

I've never heard a man say something so perfect, I realize.

We talk. We look at the sky and the way the clouds and the branches play together. But I sit up then and begin to take down my hair so that I can lie there more comfortably.

I find I have his complete attention. It is not something I am used to, certainly not from anyone other than him. He sits up in a strange, possessed fashion. He works now at distracting me while I work. There are kisses along my jaw. His fingers trace the neckline of my dress as if weighing an idea. My hands are still busy with the hairpins when I feel him slip the first two buttons on my bodice.

"John?" my stomach tightens already in anticipation of how I'll feel if he pursues much more.

"I'm sorry," he says. He lies back down and watches me as I finish freeing my hair.

He is waiting. Wanting me, I sense. But letting me come to him. Having me define the limits of our activities.

I lean over him and push the pins into his waistcoat pocket. And he smiles again. His hands toy with the strands of my hair now. I place my hands on either side of his head and lower myself to kiss him. Each kiss is returned languidly. Perfectly. But he is keeping himself in check, I see. He makes no move to rise. To take control. Or to initiate anything further.

The pace, the direction, of our tryst is mine. And as I move to kiss at his chest and pull two more of his buttons, I am feeling intoxicated. I risk a touch of my tongue as I remember the way he has done just that with me before. He groans then, and the hands that trace my arms and back increase their pressure.

While I kiss him, I move a hand to quickly hike my skirt so I can move over him. His strong hand is at my hip just as fast. He is holding me off him.

"John?"

"I don't want you to think I can't control myself." And he means that, should I lie flush against him, it will become obvious that he is aroused. Perhaps he worries that it will remind me of the frenzied way we touched two weeks previous.

"When we were outside together... at the house..." I trail off. I am remembering that night when I brushed against him while I pulled his shirttails free. I had been enthralled by the sound that came from him then. My second touch that night had been very much under my own control. Tentative, but deliberate. Because I had wanted to please him.

Would he let me touch him today?

"Men... need things. At least," I tell him with a sly smile, "that is what I have heard."

"Good God, what have you heard?" he says with just the right lilt to his voice.

I shift to lie by his side and he rolls to face me.

My hand is at his hip, and I squeeze firmly. I work the muscles a bit as I did the night I cornered him outside. "Tell me to stop," I tell him. And I hope that I've said it just right, so that he will remember the way he said that to me in the midst of our madness.

"Anna. There needs to be a limit. I will not ask you to share yourself with me."

"But do you want me to touch you? Would you let me?" I whisper into his chest. It takes him a while to realize that I find the idea enticing and wonderfully erotic. That it is what I truly want.

And he lets me then.

... ... ... ... ...

We have our pleasure in turns. It is as measured and slow as our only other time was hasty and chaotic. I am at his mercy now. And his mouth and his hands excite me with their rhythms.

"Don't," he says, when he sees I've bit at my lip rather than cry out. "No one can hear us, there's just us."

My breath comes at a stutter now, as he touches me. He pulls me closer as I let the sounds of need escape me. He moans my name and tells me that he loves me, and I am suddenly undone.

...

Later, I slowly wake, and I am not at all sure how long I've napped. There is the sky and breeze ...and him. John has pulled the edge of the blanket around us, I see. He is curled at my back with his arm across me. And I thank God for it all.

"Good morning, Anna," he whispers into my neck.

When we have had our rest, when we have restored our clothing and the proper state of our hair, I stand up.

But he doesn't want to let me help him. "It will be easy for me," I tell him. "At least you aren't dead weight."

I need to banish all thoughts of the poor, unfortunate Mr. Pamuk then. I am biting my lip. Again.

And thankfully he takes my hands.

... ... ... ... ...

We are both wondering a hundred things, I know, as we lean against that stone wall before we go our separate ways. We do not want to give voice to fear. But we cannot help the things that turn in our brains.

What will we do if he is never free of his wife? What will happen if our relationship is discovered? How will we manage if he can one day marry me, given that the married state is too often incongruous with service in a better house?

I know he has tried very hard to find Vera. He gets so many more letters than he used to. He has been writing to everyone he knows from those days and discreetly hoping for some news.

"I love you," I tell him. I can't think what else to say as we prepare to part.

The words seem to sink in for him, and I watch his mood lighten. "I don't deserve you; have I told you that recently?" His smile is beautiful and so joyous that I can't be sad that the day is almost over. "You are too young for me. Too beautiful, far too smart, and much too brave."

I kiss him. "You will just have to cope with it as best you can," I tease.

/


	5. Chapter 5

_**A/N: I've done a quick bit of research on regiments and WWI. But the limits may show.**_

_**My allegiances are with the Engineers. I've seen Royal Engineers do amazing things. In dress uniform. And on a bouncy ball. But those are military secrets I am sure I am not supposed to spill. And so, I have made Lord Grantham and Bates Engineers.**_

/ / / /

In the servants' dining room, I sit and watch Anna over the margin of my book. I am a voyeur, guiltily enjoying the sound of her laugh as she helps Daisy move the remaining items from the table.

This woman who somehow chose me is beautiful. Her figure. Her smile. Her manner. All of her.

I see her hands, and my skin registers her touch as if we are still lying together outside. It is dangerous and foolish of me to indulge myself this memory. But it has been four days now since I have done more than kiss her chastely, hurriedly, and in secret. I am nearly inconsolable.

She looks at me, finally. It is a furtive glance and with it there is some tell-tale color to her cheek. Perhaps she is thinking of our tryst as well.

She moves across the room and then looks at me again. Our eyes hold now. _Oh, Anna.__Are you remembering it, too? Remembering me beside you, how I moved to reciprocate your touches. How you wouldn't allow it._

_'Not yet,' you told me._

_With your fingertips and your whispers, you let me know we would take our pleasure in turn._

_You pressed against me, kissed me deeply..._

...

Here in the present, Daisy is near pulling at her sleeve now to get her attention, and our silent link is interrupted.

Anna turns away, and I move my eyes back to my unread page.

But the memory of our afternoon rattles through me again. I see it. I feel it. If I close my eyes for more than a second, I know I'll be transported to that spot.

I close my eyes.

_You reach for me unbidden as we lie there in the sun. The smallest quaver to your voice, you ask that you be allowed to touch and please me. First your slim hands are at my trousers, and then they work themselves within._

_I am moving under your touch with aching slowness. It is the first time your caress has been so intimate. You whisper to me, ask me to show you how..._

Here in my chair, I force my eyes open and pull at my collar.

_God, Anna. What you do to me._

I try for some distance from the memories. But watching her chest rise and fall now in this room, I can't help but recall the way _**her**_ breath had quickened, too, as she satisfied me.

With her attentions that afternoon, I was soon spent. They were moments of such disjointed passion that I felt like an inexperienced man of twenty. I know, however, that the way my breath heaved in those moments telegraphed my full age.

I remember how Anna did not recoil from the realities. I can still feel the kisses she pressed into my neck as she drew the handkerchief from my pocket. My sweet girl made use of the cloth before I'd even regained my senses.

And once my mind was more my own, I saw how beautiful she was in that shared moment. Nothing could be as stunning as Anna when she pulled at my shirt with need. Nothing as compelling as when she told me shyly that she must have my hands and mouth on her.

_Now. Please. More._

Despite the distance of time and space, in that lonely moment at this table, I _**feel**_ her sigh against my neck...

_Lord, help me_, I think, as I look at my lap.

I have to laugh at myself. At a broken past that has brought me to this.

I remember a conversation overheard years ago in the barracks at Chatham. And even though I could brag them all down today if I could live it over, I'd never. Those men had their complaints of wives and women who were unwilling, uninterested, or distant.

While I, instead, if that was today, could brag of my provocative Anna. Anna who is as deliciously untamed in those matters as she is in many another.

She is a treasure.

If only there could be a perfect world, she would be mine.

And in that perfect future, I could make love to her in a bed we share and own. I would hear the sounds I provoke in her on any given night. I would be next to her, waiting for when her need arises...

I've closed my book now and shut my eyes again.

_...in a perfect world._

But it is not a perfect world. It is our borrowed summer. With the Archduke's death and the rising rhetoric, things are set to burn across Europe.

And I fear that England, like me, will have to wake from her fantasies quite soon.

/ / / / / /

Two days have brought an unhappy world of change. Her Ladyship has lost her baby, there has been the announcement of war. Already we've seen members of the staff make plans to depart in anticipation for what will come.

We all move about as if in a fog. We are at our duties in mechanical, silent fashion. Everyone heads for their rooms at the first instance we are released. Except for Anna. She pushes through the back door, numbly, and I know I will go to her and stand in our place in the shadows.

"What will happen?" she asks.

"I don't know better than anyone else. But whatever the Boer War was, this is something many times that. It will take time. Months. But they will need an insane number of men. Machinery. Boats. This may well become the work of the country as a whole for some time."

Anna shakes her head, and she cannot seem to stop. "William? And Tom Branson? The young men in the stable?"

"And thousands more like them. Trained up and deployed. Even His Lordship may find himself pressed into some role."

"I've never been glad before that I don't have brothers," she says, lowly.

I can only nod and trace her jaw.

"What about you?" she asks, innocently.

I let up a bitter laugh. "The army wanting me back? That would be a strange, unlikely thing," I assure her.

"But everything will change. It has already. Hasn't it?" It is a painful, somehow sudden, realization that perhaps she has been putting off.

Her tears come silently now, and I gather her up. I can't stand to see her cry. I kiss her forehead lightly. "Please, Anna," I shush her. "Oh, my girl."

"Don't let go," she begs. And she is asking for so much more than just right now, I know.

"I wouldn't," I try to promise. But then, in my fairness, I need to qualify that. Because our futures are that uncertain. "I wouldn't leave you of my own doing, Anna."

She's wound herself into me now to escape my hard truths and the world's hard truths. I rock her gently.

"Anna?" Mrs. Hughes' voice intrudes our dark cocoon. "Anna, I know you must be out here. Come in so I can lock this door." There comes after that a tired and unusually plaintive "…Please."

"Yes, Mrs. Hughes." Anna drops my hands. She walks out from behind our bit of wall with her head low. It is a strange sign of the times that the proud girl doesn't mind the housekeeper seeing her mop at her eyes as she walks.

It isn't but a few seconds later that I hear the housekeeper's impressive sigh. "Anna," she says in a harsh whisper that carries. "Do tell Mr. Bates to come in as well. It will save you a trip down to unlock the door later."

/ / / / / /

Mrs. Hughes was not there to meet and lecture me when I came through the door. And she has not mentioned anything to me at all since. But then strange happenings are the rule here at the house now.

There have been telegrams nearly every day of late. From the War Office. From the family's worried relations. Downton Abbey receives visitors at odd hours.

There is no longer any sense of what constitutes the norm.

I have news for Anna when we meet at the bottom of the stairs on a mid-morning. "His Lordship is having me accompany him to London. There is a meeting to discuss filling out the old regiment."

She narrows her gaze. Everything makes us all suspicious lately. "And he wants you to go?"

"His sister has lost half her staff. He needs me to go with him, he says." I try to make light of it all. "I am not a spy. Nor a sapper. I'll not be advising them on explosives or wire. I'll be holding his coat is all."

I smile at her, but she does not look at all comforted or amused.

... .. ... ... ... ...

Our goodbye is strained. I am pained that it can consist of nothing more than a look across the yard.

We stand in strange counterpoint to the emotional way Lady Grantham pours herself into her husband's arms at the last moment beside the car. I look away. But in my mind, that is Anna wrapping herself into my coat for one last feel of me.

In London, I find there is more to do than merely hold his Lordship's coat, as I had joked. The man has not been completely aboveboard with me. But then he would have known that might not have worked.

I'm given an afternoon to visit with my mother before we head back. And the sage old thing, whose world rarely stretches beyond her sitting room, knows... she seems to know too much.

"One look at you, and I can tell," she tells me, and she pats the space beside her on the settee. "You have news. A lot of news, I would say."

She smiles encouragingly at me when I finally sit down. And she squeezes my good knee, I know, to have me start talking.

"I've discovered that I am not merely here in London to accompany Lord Grantham. At his insistence, I've been seen by the regiment's doctor. And I've been found fit enough for the work at the recruiting depot."

"And what of your bad conduct discharge?" she wonders.

"A single tribunal can make that disappear, it seems. These are desperate times, and Lord Grantham is a high-ranking officer within the regiment."

I sigh and tell her more than I had planned then. Somehow I always do.

"His Lordship is not happy, I believe, with this initial assignment. But until we have a trained force and equipment, there is nothing to deploy. So, he would be here, as well as me. It might take six months. We need men to pull in the recruits, assemble them. Give them their initial training and oversee their orders and billeting. The Regimental Depot is here near London. But the battalions will train up sappers then in Chatham..."

"Chatham?" my mother questions.

"And Aldershot."

"Well, both of those are a good bit closer to your old mother than you have been for years. But I don't know that that is what is on your mind."

"Please, mother," I object, weakly.

"If you are away from the house, you will miss her." And neither of us finds it necessary to mention her name.

"Of course. I enjoy her company. She is... " and a great number of things come to mind. She is so spirited. So determined. So caring.

"She seems a strong, sensible woman," my mother supplies. "And she must think very highly of you to want to hear my side of things."

"Perhaps I am her project of late. The rehabilitation of one John Bates." I try to joke. But my mother will have none of it.

"The rehabilitation, _**you**_ did. It is the finished project that she seems interested in," my mother tells me, as she pokes a finger towards my chest. "But... I'll warn you not to let her get her expectations too high, given your predicament."

"Must every meeting with my mother include warnings? At my age?"

"Yes, dear. I can see that it must." She turns more serious now. "Because you must remember that you are married."

I look away before I can manage the words. "I may have found that entirely too easy to forget when I was two years in prison without so much as a letter from Vera. Or when I came out to find myself alone," I say, with too much venom. "But, believe me, I have been quite _**acutely**_ aware of my status since I have been at Downton Abbey."

"Oh, John, dear. I know you have," the old woman whispers with a sympathy that leaves me quiet.


	6. Chapter 6

_Anna's POV: Bates' return to Downton!_

_**A/N:**_

_**Thanks so much for reading and especially for reviewing. I get such a kick out of knowing people like this story. It is my drug of choice.**_

_**A few things about the plot in **_**Downton Abbey**_** bothered me. The notion that Bates would end up in prison when everyone says they know he did not do it. You really do not need to send someone to prison even if they make a confession. Guilt is rather more necessary. And military commanders have the right to try many of these cases themselves local to the battalion or regiment. So, in order to justify poor Bates getting sent to prison when everyone knows he is innocent, I have made his commander a spiteful idiot who harbored a grudge.**_

_**I am working hard to find ways to keep this fresh and original, as there is no shortage of Anna/Bates fics out there. If I am replicating what is already out there, there is no point in continuing.**_

_**It is difficult though, eh? There are the constraints of reality. Of limited possibilities. Of history. And I do not want to get too weird, just to be unique. Really, Harry Potter fics are easy in comparison. A little flick of the wand. A never-before-heard-of spell, and POOF. A one-of-a-kind story.**_

_**Part of my strategy has been to read only a few of the Anna/Bates stories here. And I read those with only one eye open, hoping they would not influence me in my writing.**_

_**So, wish me luck.**_

* * *

It is early afternoon when his lordship and John return. Hours then, John and I are together in the house and not at liberty to speak with one another. When we finally have a few moments outside that evening, he walks me past our usual spot. In silence he leads me as far as the courtyard's outer walls. Then he begins with, "I love you." And I know to be worried.

"What's happened?" I ask him. "What have you done?" And I am pulling at his coat and sounding angrier than I wish to.

He bends his head to me. Perhaps it is the shadows that convince me his face is an apology. "I've met with the regiment's doctor," he tells me. "There is a chance... "

I know what he is going to say before he can get it out. And I am young and stupid and merciless in my reply. "How could you?" In my fear and my selfishness, I am accusing the poor man. "You told me they would never... "

"I've done nothing yet," he says, quite levelly and all too reasonably. "I've met with a doctor. I've let him put me through my paces. I've signed nothing. But are you going to tell me not to rejoin the regiment, if they will take me? If you could see London... the way the war has changed everything in just these three weeks."

"I hate this," I am telling him, seething now. "But it isn't you I am angry with."

"I know," he sighs.

"I shouldn't even be angry."

"But I don't think so badly of your reaction," he tells me with a touch of his hand to my hair. "When I was in the halls outside Her Ladyship's bedroom, I heard this same conversation. I think… I think I even heard a book hit the wall." He tries to smile and his hands work to soothe me now. "Can you believe me when I tell you I hate this, too? I don't know how I'll bear being away from you. Do you know that? But hear me out, Love." And his endearment stills me.

"To not go?" he continues. "I would be turning my back on King and country. On Lord Grantham and the opportunity he is trying to give me. I would lose my chance to have my record cleared. There is the pay. The pension. If Lord Grantham leaves for the regiment, there is no position for me here...

"I know, but..."

"There is the operation," he says, quietly.

"John?"

"The regimental surgeon wants to take the remaining bits of shrapnel out. Now that the metal has moved, he thinks he'll be able to do it."

I can see him. Alone. In a hospital bed. In pain. And I don't want to allow it. But I know our positions don't give us any alternative. "I won't be able to go with you," I tell him, remembering how I accompanied Mrs. Patmore.

His touch and his smile comfort me about that. He knows my thinking so completely.

"But first things first," he reminds me. "I have to have the bad conduct ruling overturned."

"And his lordship can do that?"

"He is keen to try." John pauses then, and I know there is a story coming. "His lordship asked me who my commander was at the time of the incident. 'The commander needn't have pressed charges.' That's what he told me, and that's true. Discipline and military justice, these things come down to the battalion commander.

"When I told the Earl that it was Colonel Bayless, he called him a 'bloody minded sod,' and wanted to know how I had run afoul of him... 'other than the silver. And the false confession,'" John says then, mimicking the Earl's deft sarcasm. "His Lordship has a rather stinging sense of humor even in these matters."

"You might tell the story a little faster, John! I think your Irish talents for weaving a tale are taking over, and we haven't the time..."

"Then, hush," he says. He puts the full Irish to his voice and he puts his fingers to my lips. He leans in now, and I feel his breath warm against my neck. "Hush, and now... or you'll find yourself over my knee."

I hear myself giggle against his fingertips quite unconsciously, and I register the most immediate pang of want in my stomach. And lower. I am ashamed by what he makes me feel. And still, I am undaunted and shameless at the same time as I feel myself lean into him.

He chuckles as he enforces a small space between us. "To continue... I had run afoul of the commander because of his daughter."

"Oh, John Bates!" I hiss, and I push him even farther away.

"She accused me of kissing her. Of trying to seduce her. Well, when the Earl heard this, he looked like I'd hit him in the chest. I told him I didn't want to speak ill of a senior officer's daughter... But he told me, 'In this case, you might as well, Bates. The entire regiment spoke ill of Elenore.'"

I laugh, and John smiles at me before he continues.

"I was the injured party in the matter, I told his Lordsip. I would not call it a kiss, as such; more as if I found myself..."

"Attacked?" I ask him.

"That seems too strong a word," he tells me with a small smirk that I allow him this time.

"Yes. Let's leave it at that."

"That's what his Lordship said. The important thing is that Lord Grantham can see how things unfolded. My commander held a grudge against me because of that embarrassment. He prosecuted the theft charge when he could have just docked my pay or confined me to barracks over the lies and the obstruction. So, his Lordship sees every reason things can be overturned."

There is so much hope in John's voice, in the way his arms squeeze me.

What hurts the most is to realize that hope brings a foreign sound to his speech. It is difficult to admit that I am just insecure enough that I don't want to hear it—that hope—over something that would take him away from me.

Most of the time, my whole world is… him. And in that moment, I can see that _I_ am not everything to _him._ I have one more reason to damn the war.

"There are still a few people in the regiment who were there at the time, who remember the old business. There are no guarantees. But the regiment is short experienced sergeants," he continues. But I have sadly slipped away.

"His lordship told me he is eager to put things right. 'It's a horrible thing that it is taking a war to fix things for you. But we will.' he said. Can you understand what all this means to me? Because... " he tightens his hold on me now, and tips my head so that I look at him more fully. "Because once these things are put right, I am in a better position to be with you."

"All I see is you going away... " I twist in his grasp, not wanting to hear anymore.

I've turned now, away from him, as if I can reject this reality he is delivering. Gently, he pulls me back. And whispering endearments at my ear, he settles me against his chest and us against the wall.

There is no more talk of the war or of leaving for the night.

/ / / / / /

Three days later, he slips me the telegram as we stand in the hall. "I am reinstated," he says, too simply. "His lordship received this this morning." I am strangely not surprised. Already, I am accustomed to this. This new war, I can tell, is like an avalanche rushing downhill. It will take what it wants. Crush what it will. "I will go to London almost immediately to join the regiment," he says quietly. "And among those first things then will be the surgery."

"I want to be there." I know I sound like a mournful child, and in that moment I don't even care.

"I want you there. I do. But... "

"We have no status, you and I. I'm not your wife. Not even your... " and I stop myself before I say something embarrassing.

"As best I can tell, Anna, you are my heart."

There is no time to tell him how I feel in return. My cheeks go flush, I know, and I would kiss him madly then for the beautiful thing he has said. But our situation makes no allowance for my need to touch him.

I see Mrs. Hughes round the corner.

I squeeze his hand as I press the telegram back into his palm. "Tonight... " I whisper. _Tonight I will drag you into the shadows outside. Tonight I will kiss you and tell you properly how wonderful you are. And I will show you that I can bear up under all of this, whether or not I think I truly can._

And I am off down the hall ahead of our approaching housekeeper.

/ / / / /

"When do you leave?" I whisper, once he joins me that evening in our nook.

"The day after tomorrow, in time for the 9:00 a.m. train."

"Oh, God," is all I manage to say.

"The army is not one to move slowly."

"When will I see you again?"

"I don't know," he is forced to admit. "As a sergeant I'll get a good chance at a 72-hour pass in the next few months, I should think. His lordship, if I am lucky, will arrange something for me as well when he takes his first leave."

I have tried to stay calm through this, but I feel everything breaking. My heart. My will. My resolve to not let him see me weak.

I can't work myself up to a single word. I have a hold of his lapels, and I am resting my head against his chest. I can hear my breath go ragged.

It takes a minute, perhaps, for me to gain enough command of myself that I can look up at him. He whispers to me then in his most earnest voice, "If we lose hope. If it gets that bad, you will leave Downton and come to me, wherever I am posted."

I shake my head, not to tell him that I would not come, but because I can barely believe what he is suggesting. It is the most extreme thing I have ever heard him say. It would have been unthinkable to me just a year ago that I should consider something as unseemly as that... to become something like a kept camp follower, living in a single room just outside the gates the way I would imagine the prostitutes do.

"I'll not be deployed to the continent," he tells me. "So, married or not, I'll have you near me at least, if it comes to that. We wouldn't be together, not properly. But we would not be apart."

It is a desperate thing he is saying. The most desperate I have ever heard him allow, that we would live like that.

"Anna." And with that single word I know that he will address my doubts. He'll make sense of the madness better than anyone could. He asks me solemnly then, "What is this we feel, if not a gift from God?"

Although John Bates is a man guided by what is right, I had not thought him a particularly religious soul. But I think now that _if_ he is, it is a pragmatic thing for him—his is a practical relationship with the Almighty.

It is not what he reads in a book or hears in a Sunday sermon that makes him understand God. I think now, as I listen to his assurances, that he and God simply know each other well. They have had long conversations over the years—in dark places. In times of desolation and moments of peace.

"How could He grant us this, what we feel, and not want us together?" John asks me, his voice catching on the words. "And if that means we usurp the law of man, then that is what we will do. And we shall do, I believe, with God on our side. I will not give up on this, on you. I will not stop believing that we will be together. I do not want you to give up, either."

There is some breaking then. Some need in the pair of us to both fall and to hold the other steady. There are whispered assurances of love and want and need. But it ends that night the way it always does... with me walking to the door alone, and him following in 10 minutes' time.

... ... ...

I promise him the next night that I will say my goodbyes then. I would stay inside, stay at my work come morning, even as I knew the car was collecting him and taking him away.

And that's what I do. I freeze there in Lady Edith's room when I hear the tires on gravel as Branson pulls up. I lower myself to sit on the coverlet, and I wait and wait for the sound of the doors closing. It comes, and I breathe out.

I groan and chastise myself. _You are made of sterner stuff, Anna Smith._

And I pretend it is _his_ voice I hear and not my own.

/ / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / / /

The army works fast. That is what John had said. But more, I think the army is unpredictable. I am surprised to find out only one week later that John will be back with us for ten days to convalesce.

The car glides to a stop, and it is a new stable boy who opens the door. I had known John was arriving. We had been making arrangements all yesterday for a room on the ground floor. I knew the train schedule, had even worked out the time it would take them to get here. So, I had contrived to be outside to see him arrive. I hang there at the edge of the drive, feeling the anxiety of it. I am anxious for that first glimpse of him, to reassure myself he is well.

The door is open now, but John does not emerge. There are some words exchanged. I hear Branson warning off the stable boy. Then comes John's gentle voice reassuring in reply.

Branson is hot to clear the front of the car and get to the passenger side. And I think perhaps that influences me. Past thinking or caring for propriety, I move to see what is the matter. I am nearly to the car when strong fingers catch the back of my dress and I stop short. I hear Mrs. Hughes' voice then, quiet at my shoulder. "Calm yourself, girl. We'll let Mr. Carson and Branson handle this." And I see the imposing butler then, moving with some speed for the car.

John is sideways across the back seat. Mr. Carson's strong arms seem quite gentle as they reach in to retrieve John. He appears in pieces. The new black boots. The black regimental trousers, one leg slit to the knee.

John's hand grasps Mr. Carson's bicep for leverage, and there is the Engineer's red coat now emerging. His gold piping at the cuff. The large insignia of rank. All designed to impress, I know rationally. But it works nonetheless.

Branson removes crutches from the boot while John leans on Mr. Carson. John's color has faded from the exertion so far, and I worry that the trip to the house will be an impossible one.

Once he is settled onto the crutches, he makes sure to address Mrs. Hughes, but the words are for my benefit. "It looks worse than it is. I'm fine, really."

"Set him up downstairs, in that room we cleared. Straight to bed with him," Mrs. Hughes orders. Although the man is a sergeant now in the Royal Engineers, the local assumption is that he still answers to the heads of the staff.

…

We've cleared out a room for him near the kitchen. Once the men have guided him in, it is Mrs. Hudson who props one more pillow behind him. From the doorway I get my first good look at his leg. The knee is wrapped quite thickly to keep him from bending it.

"I'll get you something to eat now," Mrs. Hughes says. And then without looking at me, she amends her statement. "Or perhaps Anna would be so helpful as to do that?"

"Of course. Tea and toast, Mr. Bates?" And I think these the oddest first words I could say to the man after our separation. He does too, I see, as his face relaxes into an easy smile.

I return with the tray and place it over him. Slowly. He smiles at how obvious I am and shakes his head at me.

"Does it hurt much?" I want to know first.

"It gets better every day," is all the stoic devil will allow.

I sit in the only chair in the room, just at the open door, and I only look at him then, for the longest time. I will not tell him that his hair is a tad mussed, because I like it that way. And I will not tell him that I think he is paler than I like. Because he hates it so fiercely when I worry.

"I can tell it hurts you," I whisper. "I don't know why I would bother to ask."

"I don't care if it hurts, Anna. I am so amazed at my luck. I had thought for sure I would be stuck in the hospital until I could pull light duty on post. But I'd never been properly quartered or in-processed. So, they were rather at a loss for how to discharge me to my unit," he explains. "I had thought the regiment would insist on my recuperating there. But I have a lenient surgeon. He wants me off the leg almost completely for a week. And he thought there would be less chance of infection if someone outside the hospital looked after me. Lord Grantham asked me if I would rather convalesce here than at hospital."

"And you told him you wanted to come?" I tease.

"You won't make me regret it, will you?" he laughs.

"I will. If it is infection we are avoiding, there will be lots of garlic going into you. And on the leg as well."

"I can't imagine anyone will want to get very close to me when you get through with me, then."

"And was there someone you wanted getting very close to you?" I ask with a complete lack of innocence.

"I find I think of little else."

"You poor, disturbed rascal."

There is silence now, and the merest shared smiles. He drinks from his tea to hide from me.

"John?" I say then, risking his given name to let him know how serious I am. "You'll be honest with me right now and tell me what the surgeon said. Are you truly all right?"

"I'm fine. It went well, I swear. He removed two pieces of shrapnel and interfered with little else, from what he says. I should do better than I did before. Less pain. More range of motion. I'll know more how the leg will do as the months go on. But I'll be fit enough for the job they have for me."

"What will you be doing?"

"I'll be on his lordship's staff. He will be the Regimental Adjutant."

"What does that mean that you do?" I ask, confused.

"From what I know of it, it is paperwork. Entirely too much paperwork. His lordship reports directly to the Regimental Commander on all administrative matters." He pauses then—and I know there is more to it.

"What is it?"

"Don't get me wrong. I am content with whatever job they give me. I've no need for glory any longer. But the Earl would prefer a post that was more... active."

"But surely this is a very important job."

"It is. He is an excellent choice to manage the day-to-day business of the regiment. But a man likes to feel... "

I can't suppress the sigh his comment provokes. Just as I can't help the pleasant aggravation this man causes me too frequently.

"Oh, God save us from what a man likes to _**feel.**_.." I tease him.


	7. Chapter 7

_**A/N: in my genealogy searches I have come across a great great great (er, something)... grandfather who seems to have sort of forgotten to come home after the American Revolution. He left behind a wife and child in CT and started over in PA. There was no divorce that we know of. The losing wife just declared him dead for the sake of pride, and in the stories that my side of the family propagated, the man was said to have died during the war. I tell you this because I think it has affected my thinking in this story.**_

_**Also, I spent a bit of time in the army and I have this notion that the military, its oddities, the behavior it inspires, etc., are probably fairly universal across countries and even eras. So, I draw on that a great deal. I tell you this because there will be some military oddities to come.**_

_**And I had gotten my story mapped out enough that I felt I could read a bit of anna/bates on the site. So, of course, I am finding that things I had intended for my story are in other stories already. Oh, well. It is a tight little universe with a great many restraints. "Really," I feel compelled to shout, "I **_**had**_** thought of all this before today!"**_

_**HOT STUFF WARNING! I regret to inform you that Anna and Bates (and I) have so very little self-restraint that they are all over each other in this one.**_

_**Bates' POV:**_

* * *

I have a lot of time to think, given that I spend at least 16 hours a day lying here as I am now. There are hours with no company where I am free to think. Hours when I can begin to understand exactly what has happened in my life.

I watch Anna now through the open doorway of my room. I can see her as she weaves through the kitchen. And I know that that slip of a girl has managed to change my life to such an unbelievable degree.

...

"_I'm not a free man." _Aching, with my palms starting to sweat, that was what I told her months ago. And with her perception, she likely knew then that I had already started to feel something for her.

There were the other attempts at steering her toward a different path. _"There are times a man might not be at liberty to say what he feels," _I told her. _"It wouldn't be right."_ But was I even trying to push her away in the end? Or was I merely asking her to rescue me from the cage I had placed myself in?

I did hold her at arm's length (oh, that is a futile vision) for a while at least. Certainly, the things I did would have worked with a lesser woman.

But Anna persisted. She is and was so sure of herself. So amazingly sure of _**me**_. She forced me to ask myself if things hadn't _**already**_ changed. Hadn't I been made a free man? Yes, there was a register's mark on a piece of paper, but was that enough to bind me to someone who had left me years ago? It was unlikely Vera felt tied her to me in any sense.

And did what society think to be right matter more than what we felt was ordained? Anna had known the answers, and she had waited for me to finally figure them out.

I hadn't done it—pushed Anna away—because of Vera. I pushed her away because I couldn't offer her her _own_ piece of paper and that register's mark. I couldn't offer her society's blessing and my name. And she, if she was like any sane woman in our world, was supposed to want that. She should have insisted on that.

Not Anna.

Thank God.

/ / / /

I've the doctor's blessing now to put weight on the leg and to walk about a bit. To stretch the knee. And so, I've pushed through the back door in search of Anna tonight.

And as I pull her into my arms without a word, I thank God again that the woman knew what it took me so much longer to realize: The way she and I love each other makes being together... right. Necessary. Society may well be offended. Let it, if it comes to that.

I reacquaint myself with her. It has been weeks since we have done more than hold hands for the space of a minute in the confines of my sickroom. I haven't said a word to her yet tonight, and still I am kissing her hotly and setting my hands to the work of learning her anew.

I groan my complaints to her over how long it has been since I have held her, touched her, and kissed her. And she answers each one.

_I know I know I know._

I can see now that I had been quixotic all those month ago. How long would I have continued to tilt at windmills, to staunchly defend a loveless marriage when I could have known real love?

I lived a delusion, denying myself the only true love I will ever know because of the loveless marriage whose ruins I stood in.

And somehow my awakening has lead to a certain shared madness. That madness was laid bare with my desperate assurance that she could leave Downton and live in whatever town I end up posted to—as my lover. A shameless offer that somehow caused neither of us any visible shame.

I tried so very hard to avoid falling in love with her.

But Anna was more than I bargained for.

Oh, Anna, I am kissing you now, and I see the paradox of it. I have somehow failed and I have won all in one stroke. Because you would not let me sit there broken at life's sideline, pretending that was right. Because you would not let me win at pushing you away.

You are a gift. But as good as it feels to have my hands on you, it hurts. I know it will hurt every day until we are together in the best way we can manage.

Love will not be denied. That is it, isn't it? _**That **_is what I have finally learned. What you showed me. Like floodwaters or the change in seasons, that is the power behind this love.

It was fruitless to try to hold it off, to deny it its place.

I am thinking and talking as my lips travel over her, and I wonder if I make any sense to my dear Anna.

"I will not be denied," I hear myself say, breathless against her neck.

"Good," she tells me.

/ / / / /

Anna finds me outside the next afternoon, sitting in an old kitchen chair. I've a bowl in my lap and a pail of potatoes at my side.

"What's all this?" she asks. "What are you doing?"

I pause and narrow my eyes at her as I prepare to willfully misconstrue. "I'm knitting a jumper," I tell her. "Come closer," I say as I crook a dirty finger at her, "and I can see if it will fit you."

She laughs and looks around for somewhere to sit. Finding a small bench, she pulls it closer. "I thought I should earn my keep," I explain. And once she is sitting, she sighs and smiles.

We are quiet then together. I finish off three more potatoes in marking our silence. I look at her and she is eying me now, all along my body. And my young, beautiful Anna is managing to make _**me**_ feel warm and wanted. "You will be quite the man about town in that new uniform," she pretends to tease. Just her whisper and the way she casts her eyes at me, and she has fueled both my ego and my libido.

"Every minute that I am not at the barracks will be spent with my mother, I'll have you know. And as much as it pains her to see me set my heart on anyone, given the mess I have made of my life, it's you she prefers. So, she and I will spend our time talking of your virtues."

I pause to wet my lips. To eye an expanse of her skin that could use my touch. And then I look into her eyes again. When I speak, my voice has changed, I notice. "Well, _**most**_ of your virtues. Some, I will keep to myself, and I will remind myself of them only when I am alone."

It started as a game, all this flirting, but it has become entirely too serious now. I haven't peeled a potato in five minutes or more, and I drop the one I have been holding back into the bowl with a groan of defeat.

"Lord, the things I want to do to you..." she finally whispers to me.

I hum my agreement.

I haven't touched her, because I know we are in full view from across the yard. And still, physically, I feel as if we have been rolling across the sheets. As if we are only seconds away from knowing each other.

This has got to stop.

"Anna," I say at last. "Would you take the potatoes in? Bring me some water?" And I move my hands away from the bowl so there is no risk of our touching when she retrieves it. I could not bear it. She understands and doesn't provoke me. Her look is flushed, but serious now.

"The towels?" she asks, pointing at the linens Mrs. Hughes had given me to protect my trousers. Then she thinks better of the offer to retrieve them. "Never mind those, I suppose..." she concludes, weakly.

"Too right," I say to myself.

/ / / / / / / / / / / /

The letter from my mother the next day is unexpected. I am surprised she has written me here, as she knows I will be back to the barracks in only a few more days.

The envelope is thick, I see. Too thick to be a normal correspondence. I look up from the table and catch Anna's eye as I pocket it. I consult the wall clock there in the servants' dining room, and decide it is a good time for me to risk stepping out for a few minutes to settle this curiosity without being seen. I'll just be on the pantry stairs out of the way of prying eyes for a moment.

She finds me there, halfway down at the bend in the stairs. I am leaning against the rough plaster, a letter on small parchment in one hand and a large document in the other.

"Anna," I croak, as I look up to see her. "Everything has changed."

"Who is it from?"

"My mother."

"Can you tell me?" she asks, and her hand rests now on my wrist.

I cannot say these things out loud, and so I merely hand her the pages my mother has written. I can hear the words in my head as she reads them.

_Firstly, John, I will tell you I am well, never better. I hope that you are mending quickly._

_Then I will ask after Miss Anna Smith. She has been on my mind of late, and I sincerely hope you have not run afoul of her with any of your behaviours._

_I shan't send this letter till I know how this business will turn out, but I'll begin it._

_Vera came to London. She followed a Scotsman here, and she is looking for you. I didn't tell her where you are or that I even know. As I write this, you are in hospital._

_You and God need to forgive me for the lie, but I asked Vera what she possibly wanted from a broken man such as you. I told her she had had everything from you already._

_She does believe me that. Her limited imagination could never let her think you would find as much as you have from life of late._

_There is some guilt in her, as well, I suppose. Or perhaps she learned something from the overly fair treatment that you showed her._

_What she wants from you at this late date, John, is a divorce._

_I told her that, inexplicably, you would want to see her happy, and that you would likely release her from the marriage if only you could._

_Vera explained that she would need to have you attest to one of the few sins that would release her by the courts. Adultery, she suggested, and abandonment._

_I shouted her to the door. As it closed, I asked her why adultery might be on her mind. She wanted the divorce—why?_

_She admitted to the man then, the Scot, and she left._

Anna looked up at me briefly, silently, as she turned to a new sheet.

_What I wrote before was three days ago._

_Vera returned today to offer up letters she has had witnessed by a lawyer. Looking more contrite than I have ever seen her, she told me, __**she**__ is admitting to __**her**__ adultery. But it is not her actions with any man while married to you that she regrets. It is plain that she finally regrets the way she treated you._

_She has asked that I forward these to you so that she can be released from your marriage by the courts. In the courts' due time, of course. I cannot imagine they will move fast enough for her liking. Or for yours._

_When next I see you, I can also give you the things she brought with her to return to you. She's given me your watch and the medals that she took when she left you._

...

"Why the change of heart on Vera's part?" Anna wants to know.

"My mother and time, I suppose. And that she needs to be free of me. She likely hopes to marry that man before he is shipped off, if he has come to London to enlist."

In small measure, perhaps, I think that I have earned Vera's forgiveness, finally. I would not say that out loud, however.

"She mentions more," Anna prompts cautiously. "The medals and a watch?"

"My father's watch. Vera had taken it. Lord, she was so angry at me," I say as I look at the ceiling and remember those dark hours. She packed a bag, took that and my medals out of spite before I had even faced the battalion commander over the silver."

Anna's face is full of emotion. Hurt, it seems for me. And I cannot have that.

"It was a rough road," I whisper, "but it led me to you and what we have. She never loved me. Not really. And I had no idea what truly loving someone could even feel like. That's why I was naive enough to think that I could merely warn you off."

"Tell me what happens now." Anna is whispering too, as if there is a spell hanging over us that might be broken.

"All of this means," I explain, "I can begin the process of petitioning for a divorce tomorrow, and there should be no hurtles. No hurtles but time and the expense of it."

Her look is expectant. She wants more information; I can tell from the rise to her eyebrows.

"How do you feel?" she asks me.

"Relieved. I _want_ to feel relieved. But it doesn't feel real yet. Not yet. I'll see if someone can run me into to town tomorrow, so the lawyer I talked with before can file these as soon as possible. And _**then**_ it will start to feel real."

She nods.

I lean more heavily against the wall once Anna has turned away. She catches me at it. Her look, thank goodness, is not worried. More like understanding.

But does she understand? My mother is giving us her blessing. That unlikely occurrence is woven in the way she worded the letter.

Still, it will be months before we can think of getting married. And what will become of us then, if his Lordship has no place for a married man on his staff?

But then, it does not pay to think too far ahead, when there is the war and I haven't even control over my own destiny.

/ / / / / / / /

Two more days have passed, and my knee is so much improved. More than anyone knows. Still, I lean heavily on my cane as I walk on ahead down the track. I let the repetitive scrape of my feet on gravel soothe my nerves. It is Anna's half-day, and she will catch me up soon.

We stand beneath the trees now, far from the road. And I launch into the words that I've rehearsed. "I am wrong to do this, Anna. But we have waited so long. And now I feel able to talk about these things whether or not the courts have declared me free." I pause then to take her hands, so that I can do the improper, properly.

"Will you have me, Anna? When we are finally able? Will you stand up with me in marriage?"

"Yes," she tells me without hesitation. "I want you to know, I promise myself to you. Completely."

The trees arch above us like the roof of a chapel, I think. But this one is more honest, perhaps, as heaven hangs there, not excluded. Our hands are clasped together, between us. The symbolism is not lost to either of us. But it will stay unsaid. This may be the closest to a wedding we can manage, if the divorce is not granted.

"I was such a fool to think I could keep from loving you. As if I could warn off spring and make it stay winter."

"I belong to you, then? In our hearts, at least?"

I nod. "And I am yours, if you are sure."

"I am," she assures me.

"When I was in town... " I trail off then, and I retrieve the box from my coat pocket. "I saw this charm."

I am not at all a dab hand, or even at ease, with these sorts of romantic things. I am sure she can see my nervousness as I give her what I've bought.

She kisses me before she even opens it, and I laugh, some nerves forgotten then. She bends her head over the thing and pries it open. "It's beautiful," she tells me as she traces the outline of the budding tree inside a silver circle.

"It looked like spring to me," I explain, feeling, and no doubt sounding, decidedly off.

"Oh, to me, too."

"_**You**_ are spring to me, Anna, with all its power and all its promise. Winter is over. And I am never going back."

/ / / /

There is an hour's madness then, as she pulls me to a hidden lean-to the gamekeeper uses. She would give herself to me out of love. She tells me this plainly as she pushes up against me. My foolish girl. And she is trouble, too, for she would make me be the one to exercise control.

Suddenly I am lying atop her—what I told myself I would _**never**_ risk. I am too weak with her. But I gently push her hands away and promise myself that my trousers will at least stay done.

"Anna, no." I tell her. But she has lifted a leg to wrap at my hip. The intimate feeling we both suddenly register stills us.

There is no coyness left now. We may be clothed, but the way we are aligned, the thoughts in our heads—it is all so completely sexual. Before I know it, I have pressed against her, hard and demanding, as I never have before. And she answers me, her spine arching and her head reaching back. She pushes up to meet me then, answering an instinct that I think surprises her.

I need to end this. To bring it to a safe conclusion. To please her and satisfy that need in her without my further involvement.

"Please… " she begs me, and I know I do not dare ask her what she wants.

I shift my weight so I can open her blouse further. I am rushed, less careful than I want to be, and she doesn't mind. Her breathing is so fast now.

I touch her low then, even as I push against her. And I bend my head to her chest to tease her there.

It is upon her quickly. That sort of breaking that overtakes her. She cries out and a few moments later, she shakes her head as if amazed. But her eyes are still screwed so tightly shut.

I try to pull away, but she holds me there. I am nearly mad with thoughts of being inside her, and she will not let go of me so I can enforce a distance between us.

With a groan, I surrender. But only partially. I open my trousers, yes. But I push her legs together and settle myself a little higher, against the heat of her stomach.

I cry out at the feeling of her warm skin. And I whimper her name. But she has me already. "Yes," she demands. She strokes me then, and I answer with the need in my hips.

Behind my closed eyes, I am inside her, and our desires and our bodies run unchecked. It takes only half a minute of such a fantasy, with her pressing me to her skin, to leave me spent.

"I'm sorry, Anna."

"Shh, John," she tells me.

But I will confess. "No, Anna. I do need to apologize. For the way I want you. The things I think! For having no control."

She shushes me again, and puts a hand to my hair. "As far as your thoughts are concerned, you are only reading my mind, I believe. As unladylike as that is for me to admit, I would bet that my thoughts and yours were fairly similar today. It is I who should apologize, John. I left you to battle both our demons, because I gave into them so early."

"What are we to do?" I muse with a sigh.

"Do? After today, we will be doing without."

"For a while. Only for a while, " I say, with a hope I actually feel for once.

/ / / / / / / / / /

Three days later, there is the car, waiting. The packed bag sits in the gravel and I turn away from it, the sight of it hurts so much.

This time at Downton has brought us the hope for a divorce. The clear statement of our intent. All of this should signal that things are better for us. But now, I'm leaving, and there is not even the comfort of knowing when we might see each other again.

I am forced to smile though, as I see much of the staff has gathered outside. What accounts for a different sort of family is standing there, off to the side. They've arranged themselves in a line, because, I think, it is the only way they know how to stand here together.

I shake hands with Mr. Carson, and the line dissolves a bit to form around me. I kiss our housekeeper on the cheek for no better reason than I know I am forgiven anything today. And last, there stands Anna.

She has moved no closer. Only waited. She will have that hard job of waiting, starting today.

After I have wrung that last hand, patted that last back, I am facing Anna. I reach for her quickly and hug her. I'm afraid that if it delays and I am caught in her eyes, there will be tears. And they might be mine.

"You are a patient soul, my dear Anna." _I love you_, I am telling her.

But she skips our code. My Anna breaks all the rules. "I love you, John," she whispers at my ear. "Be well." She pulls a small book from her apron then and presses it into my hands.

And as I step away, I watch her hand go to her chest. I smile. I can go knowing she will wear the charm with all the promises we laid upon it that day.

Somehow that buoys me.


	8. Chapter 8

**CHAPTER 8**

_**A/N: This, like a chapter of my Edith/Anthony fic, owes a nod to a conversation I had with an 82-year-old acquaintance. It is a frightening thought, but she went into her wedding night with no idea of what to expect. She was not amused, apparently, and was fairly accusing when she saw her shameful mother the next day. What I describe is pretty much her story.**_

_**This chapter revisits much the same time period as the last, but from Anna's POV.**_

* * *

My half-day is over, and I am filled with such a mixture of joy and self-reproach. On the one hand there were the promises we made to one another, the equivalent of a proposal coming from him, and the necklace that I'm wearing now to mark it all.

But then, on the other, there was my desire and my less-than-appropriate offer to have him consummate things there, outside of all places, in something less than a shack.

Usually we hold each other in check, and today I left John alone to do that. Worse than merely offer, I then actually _**asked**_ him to lie with me.

As I walk through to the servants' hall, I groan now and shake my head at the thought. Normally, I pride myself on being level-headed. A steady sort. Not today.

Today, all I knew was this joining that didn't want to end. There is this last thing wanting to _be, _between us. This last denial I am sick of making. Because if we truly belong to one another, then why can't we...

But we can't. Not yet. He is right.

John doesn't seem to harbor any ill feelings over my behavior, I am glad to see. He is at the table as we clear away after dinner. And he smiles at me over the top of his ever-present book.

But I know he feels these emotions, too. Every dinner marks the end of another day. And each day's end brings us closer to him leaving Downton again.

I sink into the chair next to him with a sigh. And seeing the room empty but for us, we risk some honest words.

"How will I do without you?" he asks me. And I could fall into the depth of his eyes just then.

"You will manage entirely too well," I assure him. "That new uniform. The better knee. There will be women throwing themselves at you."

My joke falls flat.

"I am the same man," John insists. "Minus some shrapnel and with the addition of a quarter-inch to one boot."

"Must you be so modest? So..."

"It is enough. It is _more_ than enough," he corrects. "That _you_ see the best in me. I do not expect it or even want it in anyone else. I don't even dare indulge myself any congratulations for the distance I've come."

"Then let _me_," I tell him intently. "Congratulations, Mr. Bates. As good a man as you were when you came here? I believe you are leaving a better one... not that I have been any help on that score."

He ducks his head then. And I have to smile because the gesture is so very expected. If we were alone outside, I would sneak under his defenses then and kiss him. But here I can only sigh.

He turns in his chair to face me better, his face serious. He curls the arm that holds his closed book between our bodies to mark a barrier between us. He has also done this to hide what he would not want anyone to see. His other hand rests at my knee under the table and I have covered it with my own. We've rarely been so bold.

"You think... you worry," he whispers with that patient half-smile of his, "that the war and Lord Grantham are taking me away from you..." He shakes his head; swallows hard. "How can I explain to you, that I am with you—only with you—no matter where you think I am?"

"Oh, John. You know, don't you?" I stammer. Because there are things I am not quite bold enough to do, and voicing the words, "I love you," at the servants' table seems to be one of them.

"I do, I know," he assures me.

"And you also know, I hope, that I'm sorry... about this afternoon."

"Shhh, it's fine." And I swear the man is blushing.

I squeeze his hand then, but drop it as I hear voices getting closer from the kitchen. I stand quickly and grip the back of my chair. And as Mrs. Hughes walks in to begin her inspection of things, I voice a hearty, "_You_ are a better man than I am, Gunga Din!"

And I leave quickly, because I have just succeeded in making my dear man choke by congratulating him for his sexual restraint in front of our housekeeper.

/ / / / / / / / / /

It is two nights later and the end of one of his last days here. He will be back in London, back to his duties, soon. And there are no ideas, no guarantees for what a future might hold for him or us.

Again the afternoon of my half-day all comes back to me as I lie there waiting for sleep. But then, I expect I shall revisit parts of that day for the rest of my life.

I remember the feel of his hand, warm and worried in mine, as we promised ourselves. And the kisses that felt so new and full. Without trying, I can so easily relive the sweet things he said as he gave me that charm. Lying here, I feel the heave of emotion we both so obviously registered then.

...

_I am smiling and ecstatic. His words, his promises, our pledge have made me feel invincible. I look around and note how close we are to somewhere we could be together... better. Some place that better fits the need I have to touch him. I bring him to the lean-to the gamekeeper uses when he is stuck out in foul weather. I pull John down, and work his coat and tie from him. I pull him to me and soon there is no doubt that John's body is telling me it is interested in coupling with mine._

_I know enough about these physical things, I am foolish enough to congratulate myself. I know more than many unmarried women. I have heard the act described more than once in the 11 years I've spent in service. These houses have never been short on gossipy girls who were eager to tell stories._

_There'd been Claire who'd come down from Scotland. Her neighbors, as she told it, were righteous ones. Too righteous to bother to explain anything of what a woman might experience on a wedding night. And so when the eldest daughter returned home the day after her wedding to collect her things, there had been a commotion between the daughter and her mother._

_As Claire told it, that newly married girl barricaded herself in a bedroom with her three younger sisters, and did not come down until they knew the bitter, horrible facts of life._

_But it wasn't a bitter, horrible thing. That is what my mother whispered to me before she sent me back to my employer after my first quick trip home. It needn't be, she stressed. It was that thing men needed, and it made sense to oblige them that. But it wasn't a burden at all if you married the right man. And I needed to stay away from the wrong sort. Completely, she emphasized._

_I smiled then at my mother. I smile now as I recall that moment while I lay close to John._

"_The limit of my experience is with you," I let him know, quite unnecessarily. "So, I haven't... before, but I'm not naive about these things... and I'm yours, John, as I see it."_

_The offer is made and I hold my breath._

"_You are mine, and you aren't, Anna."_

"_John?" I question. And I shift to be more fully under him, to take his delicious weight against me. He shushes me as sensation seems to take him. He moves against my hips in a way that is new to me. It should feel immodest. Or awkward. Or sinful, but I admit it is a feeling I... enjoy._

_With quick determination, I hike my skirt further up so I can put my leg alongside his hip. "Anna, no," he protests. But as this change makes him settle tighter against me, I hear him groan. He closes his eyes, then, as if at war with himself._

"_Do you need me?" I whisper, unsure how to offer._

"_Need you?" His voice is strained. "In my life, yes. But I'll not... Not here in this damp little place."_

_There is a silence then. I strain against him. "It feels so good, John." I sound, perhaps, a bit surprised._

_And his voice turns a tad frustrated then. "Just not today."_

_"Show me? Just a little?_"

"_A little," he seems to finally agree. He sighs to mark the battle he is losing with himself._

_He reaches down to run his hand up my skirt where my other leg is still trapped under him. His voice rumbles against me, and I bite my lip in anticipation. And then, slowly, that hand traces back down again to my knee._

_Shifting his weight to the other side, he pulls my knee higher now. High and snug. God, so snug against him. The effect is immediate. My attempt at speech is futile and embarrassing, I know. He is aligned so right now that I can imagine the act with little trouble._

_Once I recover from the rush of sensation, I reach for his trousers again. He firmly pulls my hand aside._

"_You know there is a reason we can't. Many reasons," he tells me, shaking his head. "I'll not run off and leave you with a child. I've seen it too many times." And the man is so right. What would we do if I fell pregnant? My God. But in that moment, I foolishly feel that I simply will not be denied._

_But desire, I am learning, does not merely ask to be answered. It demands it. Movement becomes so necessary. We are not ourselves. He moans and pushes against me. And I understand that he is appeasing a need that pre-dates thought, because I feel it, too. I close my eyes. I am aware of arching my back, of then pushing up to feel him better._

_We are closer than our only other times together, because now there is the pressure of his weight settled between my legs. It is different from our frenzied moments on the crate, when he kissed and touched me until I gasped with a quick, blinding sort of pleasure. Different even from our hours together on a picnic blanket in the sun._

_This experience has enveloped me. He surrounds me, it seems. I am panting now from the way some swelling need in me is being slowly ratcheted up. I want him... inside me. Now._

_He fumbles with the buttons on my blouse, and I hear him groan with frustration._

_His eyes are held tightly closed now as he rhythmically presses hard against me. His lips part, and he moans. I sense the difference today; I have pushed him to this. Today, his need brings out a desperate efficiency to his actions. His grip on my thigh changes as he seeks to raise and turn my hips to fit us together. And we fit now, just so, despite the barriers of his trousers and my underclothes._

_It is inexplicable, unfathomable that this could be causing me so much pleasure. It is a build-up that begs release. He looks at me differently now as he seems to judge my symptoms._

_He hurriedly flicks open two more buttons on my bodice and kisses me there, but still he maintains the constant rocking pressure where he is cradled by my hips._

_He lifts up quickly, and I wonder if he has relented. Will he undo his trousers? I hold my breath and that moment is frozen._

_But instead he maneuvers a hand between us, as he has before._

"_Beautiful. Wet," he says, as he seeks me out._

"_John?" I ask, wanting direction._

_He nips at my shoulder rather than explain._

_I call out, undone, in that next moment._

_As I come back to the world, I find him trying to pull from my grasp. I feel so horribly guilty in that moment, because I have pushed him to this. And I will make matters worse then. I foolishly think the best thing I can do is encourage him _**again**_ to allow himself to be with me._

_His voice is rough then. "No, Anna," he tells me. And he urges my legs together with his hands and knees._

_I see then he will thankfully give in to the need at least a bit. His trousers are open now, and he lies warm and hard against my belly. I touch him there. Hold him to me. And he calms a measure. "Oh, Anna," he laments._

_He looks ashamed somehow, and I will not allow it. I kiss him and implore him with my eyes._

"_Yes. Please," I tell him. I beg. Finally, he moves against me—all aching breaths and raw need. His head is buried at my neck. In my inexperience, I don't know how best to please him. The only thing I can do is encourage him to trust me. To trust us. To take some pleasure, because that pleases me, too._

_..._

Here in the dark, alone with my shame, I put my hands to my head. I groan with a sense of disbelief over what I put him through. And given that my room is my own for now, I let the words emerge aloud. "I'm sorry, John," I tell the ceiling.

...

/ / /

On this last night he'll be at Downton, I've met him in my nightgown and my robe in the servants' stairwell, as he requested. He is still in his shirt and trousers, and the look suits him, I think, as I reach for him. He is smiling as he whispers without preamble, "I want you to remember me... when you walk through these halls. When you do your work... "

"How could I not, John?" And I shake my head at him. "The years we've been together here."

He kisses me as we stand on the stairs. Kisses me deeply till, light-headed, I fumble for a grasp of the railing.

"Come with me," he tells me. And he is not himself.

His knee is stiff, yes. A limp remains. Things are not what they were when he was young, I'm sure. But he is better than he was. He is a new man. Or he is pretending to be, for my sake.

Holding his hand now and following him, I think I know why he is doing this.

Mrs. Hughes had chastised me today for my moping about. I am ashamed to admit she was right. There I was, borrowing ahead on that sorrow already when the man had not even left. John had heard her talking to me, I am sure, and he feels he needs to keep me from that sadness.

He doesn't want me to worry. He would never let me mourn his leaving, not in his presence. So, he will make tonight our triumph, our celebration, instead. We near-waltz through the servants' hall in small, halting steps. We stop and his lips are at my neck. He is whispering, transporting me, and he tells me. "You'll feel me kissing you. When you are here, Anna. Because wherever you are. I'm right there."

And we are through the door and to the side room. His years of practice allow him to impressively flip the cane he barely needs now. And with a rakish grin, he uses it to hook the edge of a laundry tub that's turned over to dry. He steers me towards the tub then and presses me on to it.

He leans in and trails his kisses down my chest as he fingers the buttons there. It is not a seduction. Not really. We are lovers enough that I know how to read his moods. We are playing here, rather than giving in to the hurt. And I feel his smile pressed into the sensitive skin of my breasts. I sigh at him and take my revenge; my hands run through his hair to muss it thoroughly.

"Laundry is going to be ever so much harder to concentrate on now, John," I tease. I take his chin in my hand and drag him up to me. "Is that the whole of your plan? You want to lose me my job because I'll be daydreaming my workday away?"

"No. But I want you to smile when you think of me. And I want to remember you here. Laughing with me, with _that_ look in your eyes. I need that, Anna. With everything else I have to do. The Regiment's work. Training soldiers who are really just clumsy civilians still. The war will make demands on me, and I need to close my eyes at night and see you here. Content and safe."

"And in love with you?"

"God, yes. In love with me, Anna."


	9. Chapter 9

_**A/N: This chapter contains letters or letter fragments that Bates writes, and one fragment of Anna's. These letters are in italics and you can see it's a fragment from the use of the little dots (er, ellipses). :)**_

_**I've been away. Mostly only mentally. Just horribly, horribly tired. I work nights and don't always get the sleep I need. Then they made me Head of All Night Mayhem where I work and I seem to sleep even less.**_

_**Thank you so much for all the lovely reviews. I really hope you like this chapter. Trying to juggle the plot (I would LOVE it if this story made sense in the end) is my bugaboo.**_

_**This chapter is from Bates' POV and takes place over the course of about eight weeks.**_

/ / /

I've settled into Regimental Headquarters with his Lordship, whom I must remind myself to call 'Colonel.' I have been here a week now. I have my desk. The stack of paperwork that's mine. A schedule that takes me from office to office, and often over to the barracks.

The Colonel knows he has been made the adjutant rather than getting a command because he has been away from the regiment for so long. And this rankles him a bit. Still, he is easy to work for.

I've taken well to the paperwork and the different sense of order required. The Colonel is pleased with how the transition has gone for both him and myself, from what he says.

At the end of my day I sit in my quarters, the single room I have here in the barracks. I check my watch, as is my habit. Always I must remind myself of the next thing that will be required of me. It is 8 in the evening. I have two hours to myself before I will do a walk-through inspection of the barracks. I unlock the chest that sits at the end of my bunk and retrieve the book that Anna gave me.

When she handed it to me, I immediately saw that it was bursting its bindings because of the letters she'd stuffed in it. There is one for each day I recovered at Downton.

I lie down on my bed and start with that first letter. I have read it now perhaps a hundred times. I chuckle once again and agree with what she's written. I am indeed glad that she gave me the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle rather than Thoreau's _Civil Disobedience._ But then, it is likely that the Thoreau was given her by that rascal Branson.

I sigh now that my brain has been forced from Anna.

If Branson is smart, he will take my advice and I will see him down here soon. Only a fool would wait for his draft notice and an assignment to God-knows-what regiment—when the Colonel and I can look after him here. I only wish William had been patient and not run off and enlisted as he had.

All of these thoughts only keep me from the obvious one. I owe Anna a letter. Here she has filled a book with the most beautiful things and I have managed nothing more than three lines scratched out on half a page. I pull myself over to the table where everything is already laid out and only waiting for me—to begin as I have other nights before.

There are a thousand things that I could and should write to Anna. But all those thoughts are incomplete and… I lean over the desk and start again.

What have I managed, I soon wonder?

Only,

_My Dearest Anna_,

_I am here and well, as you know. I miss you, of course. Thank you again for the book and the letters. I'm not used to writing you. It feels like a horribly awkward thing._

_._

I laugh out loud then at my little table. I needn't tell her how awkward I find it; it is ridiculously plain in the completely stilted way I've begun. But I won't start over. I've done that too often already, and this letter is likely late from her point of view.

.

_You will forgive me if I do not write as often as you would like, but I fear that quite quickly the letters would become monotonous. They would only say, I love you._

_There would be an entire paragraph about how I miss you. Then I would have another filled with how much I want you here with me where I can hold and touch you. Oh, Anna, I wish I could see your smile and talk with you._

_._

I give into a random thought then, and scratch it down.

.

_There's a public telephone of all things now at the post office. I don't suppose there would be a time when I could call at Downton without Carson picking up. I would love to hear your voice again. To talk instead of torturing you with my disjointed letters._

_Help me, Anna, I've gone maudlin and I am only one page in._

_I could just fill a dozen pages with these thoughts, I suppose, like a proper lovesick fool, and you could read them over and over every day._

_Then if you wanted actual news on what I was doing, there could be a separate sheet that will no doubt read the same, week after week here._

"_These new soldiers will never make proper engineers."__I'm sure I will write that to you every time._

"_We don't have half the equipment we need."_

"_Our superiors are blind to our problems."_

_And "I am too old for all of this."_

_Get used to seeing those complaints, my dear sweet girl. A soldier is not a soldier if he doesn't have something to gripe about._

_._

I lean away again and read the letter over. I wonder how this match of ours will ever survive my abilities with a pen.

.

_During the day, it seems I've made this transition all too easily. But that's not true at night. At night, I close my eyes, and I see you. Your shining hair. Your bright eyes. That bit of throat I love to kiss._

_But sometimes doubt visits me in darker moments, Anna. Especially if I've caught a glimpse of the old man that I've become in the glass above my wash basin. I worry that now that you are free of me you will see your mistake. The distance will give you cause to think, and you will find me lacking. Decide I am a millstone around your neck._

_A horrible, doubting part of me wants me to believe it was pity that brought you to me. Reassure me. I beg you, and I will not ask again._

_But I remember. You have never given up on me. Never been less than devoted. Always been more than I deserve._

_I'll close there, my poor Anna, and send this off before I am tempted to tear it up._

_Yours,_

_John_

/ / / /

"The post is here, Sir," I tell Lord Grantham. He turns from the maps he was studying on the wall and looks at me.

"Welcome news?" he asks. And I am confused. Why would he think I know what his letters contain?

"_**Your**_ post, Bates. That's what I mean," he gives me half a smile and shakes his head. He takes his letters from me now and puts them in the top drawer of his desk. "I am guessing that you've had a letter, is all. You'll forgive me, though, for intruding."

We were what the other had here. And the bond between soldiers is a different one than any other. I had forgotten, I suppose, how in times like these I was the closest thing he had to family.

So, it shouldn't surprise me that he had noticed the change in my mood. I had sequestered myself in the corner of a quiet stairwell, so that I could read my letter from Anna before I had delivered this man's post. And it seemed he could tell something of that by looking at me.

I shift my weight to my good leg as I relax a little to speak with him. "You are not intruding, Sir. I have indeed had news from some of those at Downton. And I do find it helps. It is... encouraging. I merely hadn't realized I was so transparent," I say, and I smile freely.

"Oh, I can be completely blind about the feelings of my family. But then they are women," he jokes. "I suppose I understand you a bit. If only because we are sharing this current madness... as we did the last."

I nod in acknowledgement. "I'll leave you to your work then, Sir," I tell him. But I knowingly incline my head toward the desk where he has stored his letters.

/ / /

_Anna,_

_...I believe his Lordship doesn't know about us, not beyond knowing that you are a friend and such a champion of mine. And I did not admit that the letter that had cheered me was from you._

_So, I will pretend to warn you that you'd best not write me anything too salacious or his Lordship will read much more than 'encouragement' in my manner when I deliver his post..._

/ / / /

_'Dearest John,_ (I read)

_...I've run out of memories to replay and I have begun inventing scenes. In my imagination I am far braver than in real life and much more creative. I pictured you in my bed. That fantasy proved unpalatable because it would require that we be careful and mindful of any noise we might make.'_

.

"Oh, Anna." I think I have groaned out loud there in the stairwell. I close my eyes and I see her. That troubled sort of look that comes before release. And that way she had bitten at her lip when we had shared that blanket in the woods.

God knows why, but I begin to read more.

.

_'So, my mind has quickly drummed up a wonderful scenario for a honeymoon. The anonymity of a faraway hotel and the space of a week spent leisurely in a large bed. As I picture that scene, I try to remember what it felt like to have your hands on me. It takes more than imagination to make myself remember it, to feel it, to relive it the way...'_

.

I stop reading abruptly and fold the letter back into its envelope. I slip it into an interior pocket then with shaky hands and lean up against the stairwell's wall. With effort, I clear my throat.

My trousers are a tad uncomfortable.

Is she telling me she touches herself and thinks of me? Because that is the vision that now crowds out all other thoughts.

My face has gone hot.

_I need her. _It is an emotion more than words.

I struggle to think. Cold air. That's what I need. The Colonel will get his post a few more minutes late, as I believe I need a walk around the building. Or perhaps, two.

/ / /

_Anna,_

..._I've marched those troops we do have billeted here over for Sunday services. And then marched them back again. They've been set to their tasks, and I am free to spend the evening with my mother._

_How many hundreds have I seen receive their kit and then get their first dose of army discipline and training?_

_They are not here long before they are sent to the main training camps to join battalions. They are still fresh-faced and wide-eyed when they leave here. If I ever saw them again, after the army has roughed them up a bit, I wonder if I would even recognize them._

_Half the time we are short the required stocks of equipment. I hear from the training battalions that things there are only a little better. Still they have had men train in their civilian clothes and shoes. Sometimes old stored uniforms are dragged out, even First Boer War vintage red jackets are being issued. Some regiments buy their own uniforms and boots with money from public collections._

_What sort of war is this? From here it looks like a bad costume ball or a worse play. Many regiments now are being issued with emergency blue uniforms, we have dubbed these the 'Kitchener Blues.'_

_Since you seemed so fond of my uniform, you will be pleased to know I remain smartly dressed._

_The army lacks the sergeants it needs to train this flood of recruits. There is talk of sending me to the training barracks, perhaps at Aldershot, once we've done with this initial buildup._

_Aldershot. It doesn't matter if it is any closer to you. It's too far. I want there to be no distance between us. Forgive me, Anna. Because I want there to be not an inch of space between us for a very, very long time._

_I've got distracted again, Anna._

_I sometimes tell myself that rather than count the days, I will count these recruits we've processed through the Regimental depot. I have no idea how many men I've watched go through here. But the truth is, I have counted the days._

_It's been six weeks today since I have seen you or heard the sound of your voice. There are nights when all I think is that it has been forever._

_I love you, more than anything on this Earth. How is it then that I am not with you? ..._

/ / /

My mother has fed me and packed me a small bag of biscuits. She wants so desperately to help, and it is all she can think to do, I know. I sit at her fire. I face the flames and have nothing at all to say for the longest time. It is my mother who breaks the silence.

"You miss her," she says.

"I do, yes."

"And there has been no word... on that legal matter?"

She means the divorce, I know, but she finds it better to avoid the word. "It's been through the town registry and... "

"Why you had to be married in Selby, I'll never know... " she sniffs.

"You know, mother," I say a tad wearily, "Vera was from there, and it's where we met... But the legal request now has to go through to Northallerton."

"All of that, Vera being from up there, that's what had you rushing into marrying her on that military leave you had."

"Can we please not talk of her?"

We are quiet a long time then.

"I've asked Anna to marry me. We've betrothed ourselves, as it were, secretly." I don't know why I've blurted out the truth. Perhaps because I need to share this with someone. Perhaps because it feels good and affirming to say the words out loud, to admit that all of this between Anna and me is real and not something I've made up in my head.

"Oh, John Michael Bates, you have most certainly set the cart before the horse!"

"I feel married to her already," I confess.

"Be careful. For her sake." My mother's words are more mournful than angry. "No one can know. You can't have the world seeing her as some moral-less woman... Must you be so... anxious? Must you walk about as if you are in a fog? You aren't 22 any more."

"Sometimes, I almost feel it," I tell her. But I only manage the words because I have my head turned, my attention supposedly on the flames.

"You poor soul."

/ / /

_My dearest Anna,_

_...Branson arrived today. If we are lucky, we will convince the powers that be that he would make an excellent clerk and back-up driver for the commander. He is a smart fellow. I will have no trouble convincing the officers of that. And he is mechanically inclined and qualified to drive all manner of vehicle. I just do not know if we can__convince them Branson is committed to this._

_Because, of course, Branson wants nothing to do with this fight. It is one country's poor proletariat killing another's to the amusement of the ruling classes, as he puts it. God knows if he is right about that, and I too find that I need not witness any more blood being spilt._

_Please, do not think me a coward. But I have seen this all before. And now my eyes are so much older. The prospect of battle wears on me, even safely here in England. It is difficult to read the reports on the battles, to see those lists of casualties even in those actions we claim as victories. For the first time in many years I am having nightmares again. But enough..._

_If I asked you to come to London, would you do it?_

_Why do I tease us by even dreaming of such a thing? Still, I think there must be some way you could manage it... a smart girl like you. You only need to convince Lady Grantham and the girls that they want to visit his Lordship—and that they want to bring you. You might just manage it, Anna. You can claim larger miracles. My happiness being one._

…

It is only three days later that Lord Grantham gives me some very welcome news. I contain myself in his presence and then I quickly scratch out a note while still at my desk in the headquarters.

/ / / / /

_My Anna,_

_I write to you, my love, of a Christmas miracle. Lady Edith is to be married two days before Christmas, and I am to accompany Lord Grantham to Downton. I will see you then in only a few short weeks._

_'Til you are in my arms,_

_John_


	10. Chapter 10

_**A/N: Anna's POV, and ever more epic. This is 10 pages as plunked out on my software. I seem to be growing a widening plot. Beware: Desperados, Socialists, and other eroticisms are mentioned.**_

These are strange times.

It isn't just the war. Everything seems to be changing. Inside Downton Abbey and out.

Lady Sybil brings as much change into the house as anyone. She speaks continually of the speeches she has heard. And then there are the pamphlets on women's rights that are in the young lady's room.

"You should read those," she hints when she sees my eyes are drawn to them.

I leave them, of course. Make no move to read them. And Lady Sybil, for her part, makes sure to leave them out where I will see them when I am alone in her room tidying up. There is such a large number of them that I know I can take one without her notice. I know, in fact, that that is what she has intended.

Written there are discussions I blush to read. But I don't stop. Paragraphs on sexual relations. Feminism.

...Birth control.

If one wants to prevent a pregnancy, there are things available. Things that can be ordered if one is not in London. They'd arrive by mail, unmarked.

There is more. Topics just barely mentioned, but scandalous none the less. Promoting the idea of a fulfilling life without the binds of matrimony. Hinting at finding 'joy' in oneself. Or in another woman.

None of this is what I had thought of when I heard the word 'feminism.' But then I don't know what I think anymore. I'd just like to see the end of this strangeness. I'd like to be clear on the other side already. With John. No matter where we end up, just as long as we are together.

/ / / / / / / / /

_My Anna,_

_I write to you, my love, of a Christmas miracle. Lady Edith is to be married two days before Christmas, and I am to accompany Lord Grantham to Downton._

_I will see you then in only a few short weeks._

_'Til you are in my arms,_

_John_

_/ / / / / / / /_

I already knew, of course, that Lady Edith was to be married. And that his Lordship would come home for the wedding. I had not let myself dream that John would be allowed to accompany him back.

No one talks of anything but the engagement for days. How unlikely it is. How deserved that she find someone. Was it merely a 'good match'? One of convenience?

Everyone below stairs has an opinion. But I spend time with the woman every day, and I can see how honestly happy she is.

So, I take the liberty to congratulate her and to wish her well.

Am I jealous? I have to ask myself. Does it hurt that this other pair can so easily decide to get married and then just have it be so in short order?

I admit I do envy them. It stings a bit. But I am so genuinely glad for Lady Edith that I cannot think on my jealousy for long.

/ / /

I miss John so much. Perhaps I indulge my imagination because of that.

I confess that I linger in the hall every time I hear the telephone ring. John has placed the fantasy in me that he will call for me. I am always ready should I need to be the one to answer it. But it never comes to that. And it is never him.

It is a week since his letter reached me—and the telephone rings. It is Mrs. Hughes who answers it. I peer around the corner as she speaks into the thing, wondering if it will be news from London.

The housekeeper looks over her shoulder and catches me standing there.

"I need to get Mr. Carson. It seems there is a change in plans. Come here, Anna," she says with exasperation. "Hold this thing and don't lose the connection."

I take it from her, and she walks hurriedly from the door.

"Hold it to your ear, girl," she whispers with a smile. "And pick up the other bit. Then you say 'Hello!'"

Why would I do any of that? is what I want desperately to know.

I clear my throat. "'Hello?'"

"Oh, Anna. Is that you?" I hear John's voice.

"Yes! Where are you? Are you all right?"

"I'm fine. Just anxious to see you," he whispers then. "I'm at Headquarters. They have a quiet little nook for the telephone. No one will hear me. Don't worry. His Lordship asked me to call to make arrangements. There is a change of plans, and it is to be a surprise, apparently. So, he needs to get word to Carson."

"Mrs. Hughes is fetching him now."

"Yes, I know," he laughs. "Talk quickly, Anna. Tell me you know I love you."

"I do. Of course, I do."

"Tell me you love me?"

"You know I do."

"Tell me nothing has changed," he begs, sounding a bit like a little boy.

"Only that I miss you more," I say with a glance into the corridor.

"I read your letters over... every day."

"I read yours, too."

"Oh, I pity you that," he jokes. "I'll make it up to you... when I see you."

"I hear Mr. Carson coming," and I feel a panic in me. All the things I want to say. And four seconds to say them in.

"Be careful, please. Come back to me," I whisper.

"I think of nothing else."

I wait in silence then for the butler to round the corner.

I clear my throat. "Here's Mr. Carson for you, Sergeant." And I extend my hands so the butler can take the ends of the contraption.

Mr. Carson raises an eyebrow at me and then looks back to Mrs. Hughes.

"I thought it might help if she held the thing, Mr. Carson," the housekeeper explains. "That way you would know if anything happened to the connection."

"You can just set it down. You needn't hold it to preserve the connection," he tells the woman. The butler rolls his eyes as he takes the pieces from me.

"Well, now we know that, don't we?" Mrs. Hughes fires back. She takes me by the arm and ushers me out.

/ / / / / /

Later that night I catch the housekeeper in the hallway. "Can you tell me what is so urgent that Sergeant Bates telephoned here, Mrs. Hughes?"

"As I'll need your help, yes. But it is a secret. So, it is just the three of us that know for now. His Lordship is coming in the day _early_. We'll need to get Sergeant Bates' room fixed up sooner. There will be a change to the menu for that night. We'll get his Lordship's study set to rights. That sort of thing."

I am smiling like a loon, I become aware.

She tsk's at me and shakes her head. "Why, oh why, are you grinning like that, girl?"

"I think that it's sweet that Lord Grantham is anxious to get home."

"Mind your romantic sensibilities do not prevent you from getting your work done. You'll make up Mr... _Sergeant_ Bates' room?"

"Yes."

"And I can trust you to get the study done a day early?"

"Of course... "

"And we'll want all fresh things in her Ladyship's room, as well," she says, in a tone that hints at her own romantic sensibilities.

I am grinning again.

"Oh, be off. I can't stand to look at you like this, Anna."

.. .. .. .. .. .. .. ..

I have distracted myself so thoroughly the day John is to arrive that I am actually surprised when he comes into the servants' hall. Everyone is keen to greet him, and so I wait. Watching. He seems different. Taller, maybe. And I admit, older than I remember. Just tricks of the memory that make me shake my head.

He is making his way around the table to me now. I sit back down, knowing he means to join me. Thank goodness he is the one to speak first, because I am feeling so awkward that I can't manage a proper thing to say.

"I'll sit with you, if I might?" He grins then, in that shy way of his, and sits down in his old place. "No one has taken my spot, have they?"

"The chair, yes. Silly." I whisper as he pulls in the chair next to mine. "Of course someone sits there. Did you think we would leave it open every meal time in memory of you?" And I lean against him quickly. "But no one has taken your spot... as you know."

The room has cleared, thank goodness. We are alone for the moment.

We have each turned toward the other and our ankles are linked below the table. He smiles at the contact, and his hand that lies under the table reaches out for mine. He strokes the palm with his thumb now, and I know I sigh. We say nothing. We just stare and smile.

"I need to go help the Colonel," he says finally.

"I know. I can't be sitting about, either." Still we don't move.

He pushes his chair back and starts to stand, but I pull him back down. I am the impulsive one, and he the man who indulges me.

"Anna?" he asks.

"Don't you ever want to tell the whole world? Just let it be known?"

He laughs. "Not the whole world, no. But I know what you are saying. I told my mother... that we had plans. I couldn't stand to walk about with no one knowing, I suppose."

I don't know why it helps me to hear him say that, but it does. So I smile at him. But all I say is, "I'll see you at supper."

/ / / / /

I creep into the greenhouse that night. I needn't call out for him, the groaning door has announced my arrival.

"John?"

"Just here, Anna," comes his voice off to my left.

"I can't see you... " His hands are on me then. Stroking my arms. Five hours and 30 minutes we were in that house together and unable to do this. Over two frustrating months we've been apart. I'm shaking with anticipation as I turn into him. "I'm blind out here in the dark. Can you really see me?"

"Yes," he says as he pets me. "Why did you want me to meet you here?"

"O'Brien." He can sense my mood, I am sure. It is in my lack of propriety. My tone.

"What has she... "

"First things first, John. Please, I need to kiss you," I groan.

I reach up to find him, to map him. My fingertips trace his lips. He pulls my fingers into his mouth, and I gasp. I cannot even see the man I am making love to. It is incredibly erotic. I feel strangely cut off from him, but he is all over me. He bends quickly now to work a hand under my dress. He is kissing my palm and grasping my bottom. I am lost... even before his other hand begins to tease at my breast through the fabric of my dress.

"Oh, John," I manage to say. And that is _all_ I manage to say—over and over then.

"The things I think, Anna." He holds my one arm at the wrist now. He kisses and licks at my palm and fingers in between his words.

I whimper at the sensation before I foolishly urge him, "You can tell me... Please tell me, John."

"I could… " he pants. "Right here. I want you so badly. Right here. Given just a space of wall."

I go still. My eyes are wide, I know. And he reads my thoughts.

"Oh, yes," he whispers, hot at my neck. "There are all manner of ways to make love. If you were to come to me with nothing on under that dress and sit here on my lap? We would find a way to make it work, I promise you."

"Stop, John," I beg.

"Soon," he promises, and he works to make me even more insane with kisses to my neck.

I sigh at last, as if some limit or total that I needed has been fulfilled. We kiss now; soft, full kisses. And more slowly.

"Why do we torture each other like this?" he asks.

"Because I love it... " I shamefully admit.

After a long pause he tells me, "The next time we are together, I want to lie you down... watch you. Let you show me how you want to be touched."

"Sssh, John!"

"You, in your letter, isn't that what you were admitting to?"

"Do you think I am awful?"

"No worse than any man." He puts his face to my cheek so that I will know he is smiling.

"I've read such strange things recently. I don't know what I think anymore."

"Did Branson make a Socialist of you?" he teases.

"No. Well, not quite. But there have been an awful lot of Feminist ideas floating about when I am with Lady Sybil."

"Ah. Yes... But I'm here now," he drawls.

/ / / / / / / / / / / / /

We both manage to get free for a few hours and we walk into town together. On a quiet street, I put my arm through his. After all, I tell myself, we are no longer strictly in the same employ.

I can't help but smile. I think then that if anyone knows the measure of this man I am walking about with, they must surely envy me. I look up at him with a question in my smile. Does he remember that he told me he would prefer this, our walking together in town, to our sneaking around? He pats my hand, and I think that he must.

We sit on a bench in the square after our errands are done.

"Anna, have you told your parents about me? That there is someone?"

"No... "

He reads me. The disappointment that I feel at living with this secret.

"Do you want me to write to them? If I promise to do a better job than I do with my normal letters?" he tries to joke. He lifts my chin with a single finger. "Would you feel better or would they, if I told them that I love you, that I want to take care of you for the rest of our lives?"

"If you knew them... well, promises don't matter. That you are working toward a divorce wouldn't count. It's the plain fact of things. And to them you would only be a married man." I know I look apologetic.

"I don't blame them," John says. "Straightforward people. I can appreciate that." He squeezes my hand quickly. "It will happen, Anna. I believe it. The divorce will come through. I'll write your parents that letter soon. And we will travel out to see them."

/ / / / / / / /

It is four days past the wedding, and John and his Lordship left this morning. I am in a sour, melancholy mood at best. Certainly in no mood for the likes of Miss O'Brien.

I can hear her acid tones coming from the servants' hall, but I cannot be sure what it is she is saying.

But I make out Mrs. Hughes' reply plainly enough as I come closer. "You had best mind your attitude and your tongue, Miss O' Brien," Mrs. Hughes warns.

I wonder what exactly the lady's maid has said this time to earn Mrs. Hughes' rebuke. O'Brien's grumblings are becoming everyday affairs. But it seemed today she had clearly stepped over the line.

I walk into the hall so I can be of use to Mrs. Hughes. They are alone in there, I can see. And if this conversation needs recounting to Mr. Carson or her Ladyship, I want to be able to support the housekeeper.

"Or what?" Miss O' Brien is nearly shouting now. "You think with all I know about this family that they would ever let me go? The truth about those _virtuous_ girls might just come out."

I am shocked now. Paralyzed for a moment... because I know what she means. She knows about Lady Mary and Mr. Pamuk.

I see members of the staff coming, and I turn to shut the door. Then I put my back to it. Mrs. Hughes takes a moment to thank me. Then she walks toward Miss O'Brien a step.

"Are you threatening to blackmail the family, then?" Mrs. Hughes asks quietly.

"Do you think I couldn't have any one of you sacked?"

"I know you have tried and failed," I tell Miss O'Brien.

Her head snaps to me then. "In your case, it would be all too easy, Anna. You aren't even very careful, are you?"

My stomach drops out at her words.

Mrs. Hughes has stepped between the pair of us now. Either she wants the woman all to herself, or she fears what I will do.

"Do you think even Mr. Carson is safe?" Miss O' Brien whispers then, with a sickening smile. "If I put my mind to it... "

"You threaten that man at your peril." The r's rolled off Mrs. Hughes' tongue as if she were a great bit of machinery sharpened to devour.

I fire off my words without thinking then. "You'd best watch your back, Miss O'Brien, if you ever... "

"Thank you, Anna, but I don't need your help," the housekeeper tells me without taking her eyes from O'Brien.

"But you'll have it, Mrs. Hughes, whether or not you do," I say, trying to mimic the housekeeper's composure.

/ / / / / / /

I am in with Lady Mary and Lady Sybil that evening as they get ready for bed.

"That was very sweet of his Lordship to surprise everyone by coming home early," I say, as I hang Lady Mary's things in the closet.

"It was, wasn't it?" Sybil replies.

I nod. Swallow hard as I prepare to be even more forward. "Do you think Lady Grantham might do the same? Go to London to surprise his Lordship? Go off-season even, to see him?"

"I can't imagine... " Lady Mary begins.

"Oh, that is a _wonderful_ idea, Anna. He is so awfully lonely, I'm sure, or he would not have come home the day early. I'll talk to my mother about it. We can go in February. It's such a dreary month, anyway."

I nod and Lady Sybil continues then.

"I barely saw Mr. Bates while he was here. If I had, I would have asked him how Branson is getting on."

"He did mention that he was doing well," I answer. "He will be assigned to the headquarters, so he is quite lucky, really."

"Well, he owes all of that to Bates, I hear. He is a good man to look after Branson like that." She pauses and considers things. "Do you think Bates prefers being back in the army?"

"I don't know, really. He liked being here most of the time. But it was not always easy. There was trouble below stairs." I am steering the conversation towards O'Brien. Not something I would normally dare do. But that woman has threatened too many people to let it lie.

"What sort?" Lady Sybil asks.

"You remember the day Mr. Bates fell? Well, it was Miss O'Brien who kicked the cane out from under him to embarrass him. And it was Thomas and O'Brien who worked together to get him fired by removing Lord Grantham's snuff box.

"But someone found the snuff box."

"Mr. Bates did. They had hidden it in his room so he would get blamed."

"What did they have against him?"

"Thomas wanted the valet job, silly," Mary pipes in.

The younger sister considers all this for a moment. Then with her boundless energy, she announces she is off to bed.

"Lady Mary? Might I have a quick word?" I ask as the door closes on her sister.

She nods.

I step closer and speak softly now, because of the topic I need to raise. "Miss O' Brien has been threatening that she could blackmail the family. She is talking as if she knows about what happened... _that_ night."

There is a pause while that sinks in.

"How could she know?" Lady Mary says, sounding almost panicked.

"If Thomas knew, then she would, too. Thick as thieves and just as dangerous, those two."

The young woman paces a bit, clearly agitated over the matter.

"I can't stand having her hold this over us—and having to look at her smug face every day."

"There has to be a way to keep her quiet and get rid of her. Let me think on it," I tell her.

"Preferably, any solution will not involve more dead bodies."

"No, my lady."

/ / / / / / / / / / /

Two days later the door to the sitting room closes, and I find myself facing Lady Grantham.

"I've told my mother what you said, Anna. _All_ of it," Lady Mary says.

"And I'm afraid Mrs. Hughes has confirmed an awful lot of it," Lady Grantham then adds. "So, I am convinced. O'Brien needs to go. But how do we do that? She would only tell all then."

"You need to be rid of her but still ensure she can't talk," I say slowly, the thought still not fully formed in me.

"This is not the American Wild West, Anna. I can't just have... desperados throw a sack over her head and whisk her off to Mexico."

"Make her character recommendation contingent on not telling." Mary says.

"But she could just leave that new position with a recommendation and tell the whole story then," her mother points out.

"Maybe by then it wouldn't matter?" I suggest, hinting that Lady Mary might have accepted a husband by then. The younger woman turns away from me as if pained by the suggestion.

"Or she could be struck by lightning..."

"You are being unhelpful, Mary," her mother assesses, tiredly.

"She needs a position somewhere that will hold her to the same rules. She can never divulge what she knows," I say then.

"Grandmother could take her on!" Lady Mary announces.

"I don't want ever to run into O'Brien again," Lady Grantham objects.

"Then someone in your family, your Ladyship. In America."

There is a long silence then, and I wonder whether they think my idea horribly foolish.

"Oh, well done, Anna!" And Lady Grantham's eyes go wide with the enjoyment.


	11. Chapter 11

_**Author's Note: Thank you all if you have taken the time to open this chapter after my long absence. Odd times here, to say the least. And yes. I have been led astray by other stories. **_

_**Thanks so much for reading and reviewing. I will be off to work in a few hours and I will relish checking my email and seeing if I hear from anyone overnight.**_

Bates' point of view...

* * *

It is January 21, and I, like half of Britain, am feeling decidedly ill today. Two days ago, two German Zeppelin airships crossed the Norfolk coastline at about 8.30 p.m. They were loaded with incendiary bombs, which they then dropped at Great Yarmouth and Kings Lynn.

Nine people were killed and half a dozen buildings were damaged. This toll would seem nothing given the scale of the things I must read about daily. But the effect of the raid is monumental. British soldiers are not used to feeling their homes and families are threatened. British civilians are accustomed only to distant wars.

Feeling like this, how do I write to Anna? How do I tell her everything will be all right, or that the war will be over soon? I won't. I don't dare. She's an intelligent woman. Smart enough to have noticed that every time I have made an optimistic prediction, I have been proven wrong.

After all, I told her the Army would not take me. And here I sit, away from her with no idea of when this war will end. I told her I hoped the divorce would be finalized by now, but, somehow, I am still another woman's husband.

Anna is the one with the better luck.

But it isn't luck, is it? It is her determination. Her cunning. Her beautiful resourcefulness. And _that_ is how she has convinced the Crawley women to come to London in two weeks. More, she has helped the family remove Miss O'Brien, over some scandal Anna can't explain. That sweet woman of mine would make a better tactician than half the officers here.

And without Miss O'Brien, it is Anna who will come to London soon. That is, if they are not dissuaded by the revelation that Germany has our southern coast in its sights.

Despite everything, despite the dour news we've had, I'm smiling now over Anna. I do this entirely too frequently, I know. Some of the other sergeants here have ribbed me that I enjoy army life too much. But it is most certainly not a return to uniform that has me periodically in high spirits. It is those moments when I let myself think of her and marvel that she is mine. That she loves me as she does.

… … …

There had been talk that Lord Grantham would seek married quarters, so that his wife and daughters could join him here. But I saw the color drop from the man's cheeks when he read the intelligence on these raids. "We are too vulnerable," he said, and he shook his head. "And the government wants to know what we can do about it."

"What can we do, sir? As engineers? Would they want us to make bunkers for the _**public**_ to live in? Will we all start living underground?" I ask a touch cynically.

"You might find the powers that be do not rule that out before this is over," he warned.

/ / / / / /

Finally February has come. The day when I know she will arrive in London is here. I help his Lordship get his work in order so that he can meet his family at the house in town. We are poring over paperwork, separating things, getting the piles prioritized, and I venture a word with him.

"They will be here on the 4 o'clock train then, sir?" There is no reason for me to explain who it is I mean.

"Yes," he says distractedly as he contemplates the reports he holds in either hand.

I say nothing more, but I am smiling just a touch. I look at him again and he is biting at his lip and nodding. Trying hard not to rejoice, I would say, that he will have what he so needs at hand tonight. Love. Acceptance. That place a man belongs. Perhaps I project my own feelings a tad too much.

Perhaps not.

"Carson will be with them, sir?" I find it is safe to say.

"Yes. Of course. And Anna and two others. There was some idiocy over Miss O'Brien wanting to go to America, which I was glad not to have been drawn into... " He stops and stares at me. I worry I am horribly transparent in asking about the servants. "Were you thinking of visiting the staff?"

"I'm the NCO on duty this weekend, sir. But, hopefully, I will catch up with some of them before they go back."

He nods and throws his papers down into the piles on the desk.

I do not tell him that I've found someone to switch assignments with me for Sunday afternoon and evening. Or that Anna has already secured permission to visit with my mother on that day.

/ / / / / /

Come Sunday, it is Anna who answers my mother's door. I plant a quick kiss on her cheek and touch her hair. Then I watch as a strange notion plays across her face. She is just coming to realize that we can greet each other like that here. There is her slow smile. And it turns a shade wicked. Seeing that my mother does not mean to come out of the kitchen to greet me, I bend slowly to kiss Anna on the mouth.

She does not let go even as I try to ease back. She squeezes me tightly, and behind her joy is the insecurity now. "Why," she asks, "has it become so difficult... so frightening to be away from you? There were moments when I thought I'd never lay hands on you again."

"It's the newspapers, I suspect." I try to sound reassuring. "All the stories we read that are so grim. The papers like to see us worry."

"So, you aren't worried?" she wonders.

"Not right now," I tell her. I kiss her forehead and rock her gently.

… … …

I'm living a dream, I realize, at some point in the evening. I am watching my mother and the woman I would marry work together in the kitchen. I am listening to them talk and laugh. Then I am praying with them over our meal. And later, I lean back to actively enjoy more conversation.

Answering my mother's gentle chiding, I happily take up my place at the end of the line with my towel when it is time to wash the dishes. I'm smiling fiercely, I know, over the most ordinary domestic scene. But truly, this alone is enough for me, for happiness... that I would have a family. A home. People I love and care for. Who care for me.

We play a round of cards after our dessert. And my mother only smiles and pretends not to see when I take those small opportunities to cover Anna's hand with mine.

After only one round, my mother makes her excuses and goes upstairs to get ready for bed. She will be back down later, she warns, to check on us and to see Anna off.

I wonder at this. That we are so comfortable together already. I had not expected this would be so informal - so familial -on Anna's first meal at the house. But my mother is old, and I find this changes people. They do more as they please and less as is expected by any invisible apostles of propriety.

Unwatched now, I can pull Anna around the corner and into the hall. We are out of sight from the stairs. And we hope we are out of hearing from the upstairs rooms.

I lean against the wall and long for Anna to press against me. I pray she wants to kiss and touch me as much as I ache for her. My fingers are light at her elbows, drawing her nearer. "Quickly, Anna. Please," I tell her. "I need you."

She hesitates only slightly. And then all of the emotion and the want that she has been holding in all evening come to the surface. When she looks up at me now, when she grasps at my tunic, it is different suddenly.

I kiss her deeply and smile. It is joy. Not lust. Tonight I have to be guarded and that lets me welcome a higher order of things.

I let her run her hands under my uniform to rest there. She needs that warmth and touch. It makes us real to her, I think. I mimic her now. I sneak my fingers under the hem of her blouse and rest one warm hand against her skin at the small of her back.

_You are mine._ I realize we are saying. _Flesh of my flesh. Bone of my bone._ In these moments we are as married as our hearts can make us. Willfully joined.

I rest my head at her neck and let her feel my breath on her skin. I want her desperately to know how much this means to me, and spoken words are simply impossible. The verse comes to mind,_ 'They were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.'_

How could they be ashamed? it occurs to me. Their bodies were sanctified by the spirit which had animated them. And the two were rightly one flesh.

This is my hubris, that I will not wear society's shame for this... for this connection that I forge with my hands and mouth. This is sin, the world would tell us, and I have never felt closer to God.

… … …

My mother has been upstairs twenty minutes and we know not to press our luck. And dear Anna is tired. We shift to the couch, and she leans hard against my shoulder.

She is exhausted, I see, but unwilling to go back for the night. "Come here," I tell her. I settle her under my arm. "Close your eyes."

"I love you," she says, as if she is already dreaming.

She is soon asleep, and I carefully extricate myself from the settee, placing a pillow under her head. I take up the chair next to her. She sighs in her sleep.

I'm not sure how much later it is that my mother comes back down from her room. "John?" she says, as if confused by the sight of a woman on her couch. "She's asleep?"

"She was tired, but didn't want to go just yet. I don't mind indulging her."

"Oh, lad. You are indulging _**yourself**_," my mother tells me, not unkindly, with a slow shake of her head.

Looking at Anna, I confess, "I am so very, very tired, Mother."

"Tired, John?"

"Of waiting for life to begin again. The war is the most horrible thing we can all imagine. I know," I tell her plaintively. "But I could manage it if I could only marry her and live with her. Is that a terrible thing to say? Is it selfish?"

"You've spent these years denying yourself, John. I hope that you feel forgiven at last. That you know it is, perhaps ... allowed to think of your future again. To want… well... "

"The divorce?" I supply.

She nods. She is quiet then while she looks at the innocent young woman curled on her couch.

"'It is not good that man should be alone,'" she quotes. "I am glad she found you. Found you out."

* * *

_a/n: Much is borrowed here from Genesis. The book in the Bible. Not the band. _


	12. Chapter 12

Chapter 12

/_**A/N:**_

_**What I want is at least a glancing blow at the reality of someone like Anna taking on a man who has been through a marriage already. I am sure that there is an unequal feeling that comes with the knowledge that there is a woman out there who has shared so much with the man you want to call your own. **_

_**Dear Readers: You guys are fantastic... and the only reason that I manage to get back at this keyboard. Thanks. **_

… … …

It is 9 days since I've seen John at his mother's. It has taken that long for us to both manage to get the same bit of time off in an evening. Again, I've arrived at Mrs. Bates' place before him. We are setting the table together, his mother and I. As we work, I am thinking that there are things I want to know. Things she can tell me that I think I need to hear. And I feel it will be easier for her to tell me with John absent.

And so, I stop. The silverware is still in my hands, and I ask her, "How could he have thought that he owed Vera so much that he would take the blame for her?"

I worry that I've caught the dear old woman off guard with my question. We have spoken of nothing more serious than the weather since I have arrived. But she only pauses a moment to think.

"Guilt made him do it," she says simply. "It is a powerful thing."

"Because he drank?"

"Partly. Only partly." The old woman sighs and eyes me then as she obviously wrestles with what to tell me. She seems to be evaluating me as she stands there, as if she is wondering just what I can stand to hear.

I am nearly unnerved by the time she tells me, in her slow careful way, "Vera miscarried. And she laid all her hurt on John, because he wasn't there when it happened. The miscarriage had been an early thing. And these things do just happen. But there was no consoling her. John had been off drinking when the cramps had hit her and by morning when the bleeding hit her, he was just dragging himself back in and of no use to anyone. That was the last straw for her. As little as she had tolerated him before that, she loathed him then. And it was the last straw for him. He never drank again."

I've gone hot. I can feel it. "I never thought..."

Am I a fool, I wonder, that the idea that they had had that between them surprises me...that knowing they had expected a child together unsettles me so much.

It is plain, I am sure, that the news sets me back. I feel it like a blow to my chest. I can't breathe. And selfishly, I know what it is that makes me feel that way. It is because I think that the more that there is between he and Vera, the less I will ever truly have him.

"He won't lie to you, Anna," Mrs. Bates says levelly. "Ask him what the worst and the best things were that ever happened between him and her, and he will tell you."

I am stammering now. "I don't know why it never occurred to me that they might ..."

"They were never to be, Anna," Mrs Bates says as she shakes her head. "You are young. So sweet," she tells me. And I think, really, she means that I am naïve. "And I don't know how to tell you all of this." She pauses then, not wanting to go on. But finally she continues, "That she was pregnant doesn't mean they loved each other. It doesn't make the marriage any thing more than the broken thing it was. What the miscarriage did was add to the hurt, is all. And it made things fall apart all the quicker."

It isn't more than another minute then till we hear John arrive. He sees the look to me that I can't hide as his mother lets him in. Worriedly, he asks his mother, "What is it?"

"Go talk it out, the two of yeh," the tired seeming woman says sadly. "I'll be in the kitchen."

"Please, Anna. We can talk upstairs," John recommends, as he watches his mother go.

"You and Vera were expecting a child," I say as soon as he has closed us into his mother's second bedroom.

He hangs his head then. Not with shame, but with regret, I think.

"Yes," is his simple answer.

"But your marriage before that point..." I say, sounding confused.

"Was already a hopeless mess. Yes."

"You gave that part of you to her when it meant less then? And you won't with me?" I accuse.

"There are reasons. We've talked about this."

"You don't want to risk my getting pregnant," I reply matter-of-factly.

"Yes. And I want to be with you a full night. In a proper bed. I don't want it to feel like a sordid thing. I don't want it to mean less. For your sake."

I inhale and steel myself so I can make my painful admission. "I know it's wrong to think like this. But you were with her even when it meant less. And I think that is part of the reason that I want to finally ..."

"Be together as if we are married?" he helps me finish.

I laugh bitterly, and when I speak some anger shows. "Not like we are _married _necessarily, because I am getting an education on what occurs in even a supposedly loveless marriage. But as if we were that much in love. That sure."

"Explain it to me, Anna. You want us to consummate this because..."

"Because I love you. Because I crave you. Because I think about ending this frustration that has me at the point of distraction all of the time. And yes, because I am childish and insecure, and I want you to be all _mine_. I don't want there to be that thing that you shared with her and not with _me_." I sound ever so less adult than I had hoped. But he seems to understand.

"There are a 100 things," he says solemnly. "A thousand things that I have shared with you and never, not once, shared with her."

"What, possibly?" I say, not believing.

The answer comes so easily to him that I am ensnared. "Friendship," he tells me. "Trust. Real understanding. A love that aches like this. Hope for a long future..." and the look on his face tells me it is all so true.

I feel like an idiot now. "I'm sorry," I tell him.

"I'm sorry, too. I never should have married her. She and I rushed into it. The two of us were living some sort of delusion, I suppose. We were both of us feeling alone, and we thought the other could help. We thought the thrill at having someone, at having _**anyone**_, was love, I suppose."

"I won't compare," I pledge. "I shouldn't. It's stupid and pointless. It was just an emotional reaction, I guess."

"You were feeling jealous? Because I haven't taken you to bed?" He looks slightly amused as he asks me this.

"Yes, all right. I admit it. Not a pretty thing. So, let's forget it. "

"There is a bed right here, Anna. My mother will happily stir that stew for another 20 minutes."

"Don't be crude. And don't be ridiculous," I tell him firmly.

"I don't want to be crude. Not with you. That is my point, I suppose. But I swear women are never quite happy," he says, smiling again. "You are angry when we men are too forward, and now, in this advanced day and age, women get angry when we do NOT drag them off to bed."

"You've made your point."

"Please? Let me put my arms around you again?" he tells me. I settle in against him then, and he bends to kiss my neck. "I want you with me, Anna. You know I do. I close my eyes at night and try to sleep, but your name is there - echoing somehow."

"That's how it is for me. Just as I'm ready to drift off. Oh, John," I say sadly.

"You know how I get with you." He puts his mouth to my ear now to tell me quietly, almost shyly. "I get so hard and aching. Please don't fault me for not acting on it." My breath comes fast and shallow at the plainness to his words. "You know I want it. I want to be inside you," he whispers.

I groan, "I want it, too."

"For some people that is all they have. We can wait because there is more to us."

... ... ... ... ...

As we leave the room, it occurs to me that Vera has forgiven him. That is the message she was sending when she returned the watch and the medals to him. She must have realized at some point over the past few years that John was not responsible for what happened. He was only guilty of not being there when she needed him. A transgression, yes. But he had suffered enough for that.

"Is this the last secret then?" I ask as I stop him halfway down the stairs. "That you were not there for Vera. That you, being off..."

"Drunk," he supplies, unshirkingly.

"But that is the last of the secrets?" I beg.

"Yes. I felt so horribly..."

"I know, John. But that man isn't the one standing here now. You can put it all behind you, because there is nothing you are keeping from me any longer... and because you know that Vera no longer blames you."

He nodded. "I've told myself that she _must_ have forgiven me... because she returned everything."

"She could have thrown those things in the nearest river," I tell him with half a smile. "But once she forgave you, then she couldn't."

He is smiling at me and his face is so much lighter for it. And younger. Things are easy between us again. And I think, perhaps, he feels a bit giddy knowing we have worked through what we did.

We manage the stairs walking side by side. Our steps are matched and our hands are laced together. John bends his head toward the kitchen once we reach the bottom. He is listening for his mother. I can only guess that something in what he hears assures him she intends to remain at the stove, because he leads me then to the small room at the back of the house.

It would amount to nothing more than a coat closet at Downton Abbey. But here it holds a modest bed and a few furnishings.

"If we stay here once we are married, my mother will move down to this room. She's hinted at it already," he tells me, quietly. He often whispers when he talks about the future, I've noticed. As if it is a fragile thing that too much wishful thinking could dislodge.

He squeezes my hand and leads me further in. I am only a foot from the small bed now.

We've never been in a bed together, obviously. Such a simple thing to any married couple, I am sure. To lie next to each other. At ease and wrapped in warm blankets.

I think he is entertaining the same thoughts, because I hear him tell me, "Lie down." There is a rakish grin on his face, and his voice is breathy and not quite his. "A whole week you visited with me while I recouperated. I thought it horribly unfair that I have never been able to see _you _lying in a bed."

"John, your mother is only in the kitchen," I whisper, harshly. But I can't reason with him, not with the euphoria he feels tonight at our having dispelled the last of the secrets that he feared.

"I'll not be joining you, but I want you there. Indulge me?" he pleads. His fingers push and pull at my hips lightly while he talks, working me off balance. "Give me that picture in my mind for all those nights I spend alone. I want to see you. Your head on a proper pillow, the sheets about you. And I'll draw the rest of it together in my imagination. The part where I am next to you."

He has his hands on my arms now, and he is walking me backward.

"John!" My voice is quiet, but urgent. "Stop fooling about!" I tell him. But in this state, he will not listen. My calves hit the mattress, and I stifle a shriek. It has become a bit of a wrestling match with him pushing me as if he will have me topple to the mattress while I am wiggling to get free. Finally, he has me so off balance that should I get free of his grasp I would only fall. Perversely, he has become that thing that is actually holding me up. I am at his mercy, and he grins at me. I have no doubt it is our giggling which brings us some unwelcome attention suddenly.

"Jesus, Mary, and Joseph?" his mother questions from behind us. "You will excuse me my vernacular, I hope, Anna. But what the devil is going on?"

John pulls me toward him so that I am fully on to my feet. I am sure my groan of embarrassment is quite audible then, and I look only at my shoes like a shamed scullery maid. When I do finally look up, I see the venerable woman's mood has not held. She is working to act more upset than she is, I suddenly decide. "A pair of children back here," she announces. "Do I need to keep you under my eye all the time?"

"No ma'am," he tells her.

"Quite possibly," I feel free to interject.

And he laughs. And I love him all the more for it.

/ / / / / / /


	13. Chapter 13

_**We left our heroes at Mrs. Bates' place. There was some angst over Anna's discovering just what specifically John had felt so guilty about all these years of his marriage. And then there was some giddy playfulness in the back room.**_

_**Do check out the Highclere Awards. Google 'Highclere Awards' and there you go. **_

Bates' POV

* * *

As we have our push-and-pull there, I am, as Anna said, another man. Not just younger-feeling, but truly someone I have never been before. Someone more confident and carefree than I have a right to be, given my past. Or given that this war is pressing all around us.

But that new man is who I am with her. And with her, teasing her, laughing and nearly wrestling with her, I see that this is how it could be. That making love with her would be like it has never been for me. There could be joy, and fullness, this thrill and lightness.

Because I am forgiven. Redeemed. Claimed. And happy here with her.

But how can she be happy with me? With the knowledge of what I am—or was? I saw the disapproval in her face and heard it in her voice. She was confused and disquieted by the type of marriage Vera and I had at the end. And still she forgave me. Declared me a new man. A better man.

Perhaps that is her better judgement at work, there. She has chosen to push certain knowledge away. Thank God, because how could I explain it to her?

How could I explain that some nights, high as a kite on booze, Vera and I would fall into bed… that occasionally we would both be not only willing, but able to have sex. That it was the little right we could ever manage, if only because it was quick and wordless and brought us sleep.

How do you explain anything that base to someone like Anna?

But she knows it all now.

And after all that knowledge has been forced on her, somehow she still wants me to touch her. I cannot understand it.

But then Anna is not blind or even uninformed about the world. She knows that there is the meaningless sex that passes between prostitutes and the men who buy them. She knows there is the luckless, better-avoided sex between young men who say more than they mean and the girls who would believe them.

Still, I don't think she was ready to learn that there are those broken marriages where something that _should_ mean something still happens on occasion—out of habit or nostalgia or wishful thinking—when it doesn't mean what it should. In the end, my marriage was full of moments when I wasn't fooling anyone other than myself.

I have been an unhappy education to Anna.

Can she trust that marriage still means something to me? Does my twisted logic mean anything to her?

I console myself that she seemed to forgive me by night's end. I'm left to wonder though, with all we have been through: Will she work at me harder to finally consummate what we have?

Or will she want some distance now?


	14. Chapter 14

_**A/N: This picks up after that last evening at Mrs. Bates'. (Does that poor, dear woman have a first name?)**_

_**From the moment (MONTHS AGO!) that I started writing this story, THIS is one of the key chapters that I have been trying to get to. If I could not get them married first, I would get them into bed. Yes, but first I would torture them for 13 chapters!**_

_**So, they actually land IN a bed in this one. MyMadness pushes T to its Tantalizing limits here. **_

Anna's POV

* * *

It's been months since the day we pledged ourselves to one another. And being with him, really _being with him,_ is something I think of constantly.

He is walking me from where the bus has left us to the servants' entrance of Lord Grantham's London house. But I stop John before we are quite there.

"You'll be late," he warns. "There will be hell to pay."

"Things are different here at the London house... or maybe it's the war," I tell him. "But Mr. Carson doesn't mind if I get back a bit late. It isn't often I get out, and he knows that I am out to 'look after' your mother."

"Is that the story you weave?" John asks with a chuckle. "You have them convinced that my mother is somehow infirm and that you are taking my place in caring for her?"

"It seems to be what they all infer, and I have not disabused them of that notion." I am smiling now.

"Oh, the devil in you," he says lightly.

"I want to tell you... " I begin unevenly. "I want to... " I groan then. I am getting nowhere with this explanation. I pull him closer then into the dark by the brick wall, and I whisper to him. I tell him that I know what it takes to prevent a pregnancy, and that I've secured those things. He is somewhat confused; he has not heard of these female methods before. I smile harder as I explain. It isn't often that I know something he does not. But these 'female methods' are the ones pushed so strongly in the pamphlets I've snuck from Lady Sybil. There are women out there who will tell you that we should not trust men with birth control.

"Please, John. Find a time and place where we can be together. Just one night?"

His head tips back so he can look at the sky, and I hear him sigh. I worry that he is going to rebuff me. But he pulls me in tighter instead, and tucks me under his chin.

"It could be weeks," he tells me. "But I will try. I promise." He has a thousand objections to the scheme, I can tell. But he keeps them to himself.

/ / / / / / / / / /

"There is someone I want to visit who needs some looking after. She isn't well. It's just that it would be difficult to return as late as I'd like to stay," I tell Lady Mary and Lady Sybil a week later.

"You would return... in the morning?" the elder sister asks.

It sounds scandalous now, I realize.

"It's Mr. Bates' mother," I explain. "I promised him I would look in on her. And she doesn't want him to worry, but she needs more help just now. And with him with the regiment and busy... "

Of course, Lady Mary perceives a debt after all the difficult things I have done for her. Lady Sybil who is on her feet now, voicing her support for the idea, is just anti-authority-minded. But then she also harbors a soft spot for John, I know, after the way he has looked after Branson.

(I thank God that Lady Edith is absent, as she might have run contrary to Lady Mary merely on principal.)

There should be only the smallest inconvenience, Lady Mary tells me, because the night I've asked to have off the family is merely having a quiet dinner at the house with his Lordship. The Colonel was finally able to get two days with them together, they tell me. But I know this already. John has written to tell me that some sort of 'training holiday' for the regiment is what is making all of this possible: his Lordship's weekend with his family and John's night with me. Although, ostensibly, at least, John is part of that skeleton crew that will be manning the regiment over the weekend.

John, being the resourceful fellow he is, has found someone to cover for him for the one evening, and we are to meet at his mother's house.

/ / /

Again, come that evening, I am at the house before him. But the dear woman and I get along so well that I actually welcome the time to talk with her without a man around.

His mother has me answer the door when the bell rings. She heads into the kitchen then, as obvious as could be. This is the chance she is giving us to be together and not under her eye.

"I've missed you," I tell him. And he is letting me know he's missed me with the way he kisses at my neck.

He hazards a glance over my shoulder to see if his mother is coming, and then he whispers, "Are you coming back with me tonight? To the billets?" His voice is more solemn and anxious than enticing.

I only nod.

He seems as nervous and afraid of this change as I am. He worries, I know.

We hear his mother's singing in warning, and the kitchen door swings open.

I smile hard as I watch him greet his mother. She pats his face. He is still her boy in her eyes, I know. And I love that he is so many things to those of us who need him.

"Sometimes I used to think I saw the devil in your smile, John. I never thought I'd miss that. Why are you so serious tonight?" she wants to know.

"It's just work, Mother. But now that I'm here, I'll be the life of the party," he jokes. "You'll see."

"Mind I _**don't **_see," she teases back. And the pair of them and their banter have made me laugh, despite my misgivings.

She is a proud woman, but she lets us help her in the kitchen. Even John is in here, not wanting to be alone without us. Without me. His mother knows it too and shakes her head at him. She smiles as he takes over the task of getting the potatoes done.

And as it all goes on, I see this is how it should be. Dinners like this. The ease and happiness of family.

The meal and conversation pass slowly, given that we have our planned assignation. I swear Mrs. Bates picks up on some of our nervousness.

We make horribly clipped small talk after dinner, and then John makes our excuses. He cannot be spared from the barracks, he explains.

Once we are out on the street he leans to my ear from behind me. "We'll have the night together, if you still want, but that doesn't mean I expect anything."

"I want to, John. Really," I nearly plead. "We've been together so long. It feels right. Natural to be more, if we can."

The way he pauses and drops his head to my shoulder makes me believe he's agreed. Tonight is about how comfortable we are together now. It is a question of bringing that final fullness in. It is, thank God, no longer about jealousy or possession or about anyone but us.

"Anna. You might be expecting too much. "

"Of you?" I try to joke.

I am forcing him to think about how long it has been since he has been to bed with a woman. And he has told me it has been a very, very long time.

"That's always possible," he tells me flatly. "But I meant you might be expecting too much from the night. Of our first time. This could be a horrible mistake. It could be the worst night we ever have together. Awkward and uncomfortable. And you won't have the better times to compare it to—at least not right away—because we will be apart."

"Let's go," I tell him quietly.

"You'll blame me."

"Never," I assure him, and I take his arm and wait for him to take us to the taxi stand.

/ / / / / / / / / /

"It's so quiet," I observe as we walk toward the low buildings on the limits of the Regiment's grounds.

"It's because there is that break just now between groups of soldiers. The training holiday. Most of the officers are gone," he tells me. "And I posted the most lackluster training reject I could find on guard duty tonight," he says, with a nod back towards the lanky young boy we passed fifty yards previous. "He heads home in the morning. He has no one to tell that I came through with a woman tonight."

"But what about tomorrow morning?" I whisper.

"I've put Branson on the West gate, and you can tell him you've been sent to pick up some things the Colonel forgot."

We are up against a brick entrance now, and the exterior lamp is suspiciously not functioning, I note. I stand in the shadows while John works a key in the door. "These billets each have a separate entrance," he whispers. "I would not stand a prayer of getting you in the noncommissioned area, not unless I brought you in in a sack." He closes the door with us finally inside the darkened quarters. "Oh, don't laugh about the girl-in-the-sack trick. It's been tried. And no, never by me."

He lights only a few candles to provide us just the light we need. I do not think it is romance he is thinking of, but rather avoiding anyone's attention from the outside.

"It took some convincing to get his Lordship to leave," John continues. "His sense of duty was making him shortsighted. He hates that we are not being deployed to the continent. So, he works extra hard to make up for it, it seems."

"So, you are the one who convinced him to take these two days?"

"Yes. Most of the cadre were given a 48-hour pass, and he was not even going to use it."

I look around. "Oh, God. So, these are Lord Grantham's rooms?"

"Yes."

A desk. A table and chairs. A dresser. A washstand. Then a partition. And then... "Oh, heavens. So, that's _his_ bed?"

"Just think of it as an army bed," he teases. "It's ours for the night. I just need to set it right for when he returns."

Part of tonight is just this sharing of space with John. This learning to be comfortable in our new situation. Mentally, I try to set myself to that task.

"I've hung a robe for you in the washroom," John tells me. And with that statement, he has made everything very, very real. My meager bravado does not allow that I actually say anything now, but I do manage to smile and walk for the room he is pointing to.

I would have been very glad to have worn John's robe, but I find he has got me a new one.

Smiling harder now, I stick my head back out the washroom door. "Hello, you!" I call softly. I ask to kiss him in thanks. Once I've finished my washing up, I pull on the small nightgown I had hidden in my coat all evening. Finally, I put on the new robe.

I check to see how I look and tug at my hair briefly. I admit to the woman in the glass that I am a bit nervous.

We meet in the middle of the floor, and he is all whispers. We both are.

"Go on to bed," he prompts me. "I'll be out in a bit."

The sheets are cold, and I think the long-sleeved nightgown would have been the wiser choice—were warmth the overriding concern.

It feels so calculating, but I have made so many choices in the past few weeks with the idea that he and I would consummate the relationship tonight. I had childishly thought there was more spontaneity to this sort of thing. But here I am, having worked through something like a laundry list to get to this point.

He returns from his quick bath, and he is half-dressed. I had not known what to expect, I suddenly realize. He is shirtless and barefoot, I can tell, despite the low light. But he has on his trousers.

We don't speak. I watch him while he rubs at his head as he sits on the edge of the bed. It is as if he is questioning the sanity of our situation.

He stands again, and I think he has reconsidered our scheme. But he only needed the moment on his feet to unhook the trousers and lower them.

I am holding my breath as I wait for him to join me under the covers. I can think of nothing sensible to say, and the words that come out as I lift the blankets are an inane, "I'm cold, John."

He is down to his shorts as he slides across the sheets. And I realize he is a man of a certain habit and propriety; that he had put on his trousers after his bath only so that he could walk across the room.

"Come here then," he tells me gently. And his one arm is under my head and the other is around my waist.

Even though we have been far more intimate than we are in that moment, now feels much more nerve-wracking. There is that knowledge that we are sharing a bed for the first time, and also we know these moments are only so much prelude.

We have kept a space between us. But I reach up to pet his cheek. "I love you," I remind him. And I kiss him.

"Anna…" he begins, then falters. His hand is stroking my arm as if to soothe rather than entice.

I manage a laugh. "This is when you tell me not to worry—that you don't expect anything."

"This is not a frivolous conversation," he begins, and I worry that he will make me more nervous with this serious tone. But he is teasing me, I realize, when he grabs me at the ribs to tickle me.

I giggle, but more, I revel in hearing his low laugh.

"It will be all right, John."

I feel his smile now under my fingertips.

"I had thought I would need to reassure _**you**_ of that," he tells me.

"We'll take that duty in turns. For the rest of our lives."

We kiss then. Lightly at first. And I take the time to enjoy the feel of his arms and chest. Even with all the intimacies that we have managed before, not until tonight have I ever had him completely out of his shirt.

When I earn a moan from him, I am encouraged. I work at his neck a little more.

I am not forgotten. His touch is light, though. His hand ghosts along my back and sides, making me tingle.

I stop kissing him. I am waiting impatiently for his touch to change. Wanting it to change. I run my hand broadly down his flank before I hook my fingers in at the top of his shorts. He answers my touch, though his fingers seem much surer than mine.

He traces down my side to find the hem of my nightgown, and then he slides his hand back up, warming the skin of my thigh as he goes. He moves with a slowness that has me quaking.

And when he finds that I have no undergarments on for him to similarly hook, he groans and circles my hip bone with his fingers.

I sense things have turned more serious when he uses his grip on my hip to ease me onto my back.

"I want to touch you," he whispers as he leans over me. And he tugs the nightgown higher until I realize he means to have it off me. I am a step behind, as if I am watching this play from somewhere outside my body.

I am naked suddenly, under the blankets. Chilled. But flushed hot.

I find the waist of his shorts again, and I give them a pull. "What about you?" I ask him.

"Shhh. I need to feel you. I need to... " He fades off then as his palm slides from my belly down a line to rest between my legs.

The noise I make is long and low and primitive.

"Like that, Anna?" he asks earnestly, and he touches me further. "I want to hear you. To know... " he encourages.

I try to understand why he seems to want me to finish when I had expected something else.

I am moaning now as his fingers test me. And my hips rise to meet his hand.

"Let me," he whispers.

And I know to relax the tension that has kept my body too rigid.

I gasp and I start to keen to the new rhythm he sets. And he loves it, I think, as much as I do.

"Just like that," he tells me. "Finish, Anna. Let it come."

A sort of trembling overtakes me then. It is more intense, less sharp than the pleasure he has shown me before. It is a bit like falling, but pleasant. And I feel myself go tense before I slacken completely.

"I don't understand," I hear myself tell him. I have not even managed to open my eyes or to form a more coherent thought. And I am vaguely embarrassed that I seem to have said anything out loud.

He hums against my neck. And I know he loves me and that he understands my confusion.

He is over me now. My knees are at his hips. And with my hands I find his shorts are gone. His small movements tease me. And my head is whirring. Working, but not really comprehending. I think perhaps, I will just need to figure out the full of this later. What's just happened and what's about to.

His voice then is at my ear. Raw and breaking. I hear him say my name. And I feel as if I have failed him then, as I realize that he has been waiting for me to let him know he should proceed.

"Oh, dear, yes," I beg him, and I pull at him as I arch to meet him.

And it hurts. I know it does, but it is a sort of distant realization. Mostly there is just the fullness and the sweet feeling of being held by him. There is the desire to make him feel the way he's made me feel.

Finally, he moves, and I feel my body answer what he does as if this was all simply meant to be.

"Oh, God!" I surprise myself by saying. He has triggered something in me, created a sensation that quite plainly overwhelms as surely as a jolt of electricity might. He withdraws and rejoins me, and there is amazement in me and my gasping breath.

I think it is the world's most pleasant drowning. If he didn't keep me there with his reassuring weight against my chest, I think I would sink away. To me, it is as if I leave and then return.

He seems troubled, I see now, in his movements. But instinctively, I know it is just that his pleasure is that intense.

"Oh, perfect, Anna." And speech fails him then as sensation takes him. He moves more desperately suddenly, and I cradle him with my hips and with my arms, happy to be what he obviously needs. I love him so much in those strange moments when there is Effort. Exertion.

And finally, Reward.

He is heavier now against me. Taken as he is. His breath heaves, and I run careful fingers through his hair.

"I love you, Anna," he breathes at my ear.

He groans as he pulls to one side. And things are wet and awkward. And strange 'down there.'

"Are you all right?" he needs to know.

"I'm fine," I assure him as I turn to burrow into his side.

"How did it feel?"

I did not expect this question. But the bed, this darkness, and these activities, they bring a strange _verbal_ intimacy, I decide.

I stutter, I think. "It was... fine. Wonderful, really. The way you touched me. And it felt amazing and then... "

"And then... " he echoes, sounding worried.

"It stung. But then it started to feel good. Different from before. But... so, so good." I know I purr these last words.

"And now?"

"A little... rearranged feeling," I admit, shyly. "And you?"

He laughs softly and then sighs. He is tired, I see now. "I feel wonderful... but wet and sticky." He is smiling against my neck.

"I left those last two out for propriety's sake," I tease quietly.

"Sleep a bit, love," he says, his voice sounding far away. "And later I'll run you a bath, if you want." He is asleep then in that moment.


	15. Chapter 15

_**A/N: Thank you so much for sticking with me and this story. Sincerely.**_

_We left our heroes in bed... this chapter contains a smut warning. Hopefully, it is satisfying while remaining teasingly oblique (in the tradition of things "T")._

_John's POV_

* * *

Some of what I am feeling, I admit to myself, is relief that it is over—that first time. I worried so deeply. She was so brave about it, but bodily, so tense at first. I'm smiling hard now as I replay the best of it over in my mind. Suddenly, joy has me so buoyant that I am nearly laughing. But I daren't. My love is sleeping tucked at my side.

I'm not horribly satisfied with the way things were. Our lovemaking was direct. Functional. It being our first time—more importantly, her first time—it was by necessity, I know.

I've wanted to take her to bed for so long now. I've quite literally and shamefully dreamt of this night. And it never went off so quickly in my dreams, I muse. But it needed to. For my sanity. And if she was to be at all comfortable.

I am hovering over her now like some kind of predator, aching to touch her. _She's beautiful. So beautiful. _The thought thuds through me like a Scottish regiment's tattoo.

If she would have me again so soon, I would take things immeasurably slower. I would hold her above me, I imagine, and let her come to me. And with no eye to the passing of time, I would tease and satisfy her, and tease and satisfy her, in turn. Until she and I could take no more...

_Until the Colonel came for his room, _I think, smirking.

I force myself to quit the bed and the fantasy. I head quietly for the facilities.

/ / / / / / / / /

"Did I wake you?" I ask, as I return to bed.

"No. Maybe," she smiles, ridiculously. "I don't know."

"You've got up already?" And the way I say it, she knows I'm concerned. She knows I'm asking—in my manner—if she's been up to use the facilities and to inspect the damage, so to say.

"Yes. I'm _fine_, love," she assures me. And with that timber to her voice, she is another person, suddenly, I think. "In fact, I hear it is better the second time." She is most definitely someone I was not prepared to meet between the sheets of my commanding officer's bed.

"Anna?" I say, with a smile I know creases my face.

"Come _here,_" she almost whines.

"I think I'm as close as I dare come," I tell her.

"Show me," she whispers as she reaches for me.

"Show you what?" I answer, with the same hushed tone and cautious touch.

"Show me _any_ of a thousand things."

And I think in that moment that she is the one who is showing _me_ what it really is to be in love. What it is to trust and share and be. She is a spark of life that renews me. Only through her have I ever managed to seize a moment. To appreciate it without the endless weighing of things.

"_You_ come here," I tell her, as I roll flat onto my back. "Spare an old veteran any further damage to his war wounds," I tease at a whisper.

I shouldn't have teased her so; she is feeling guilty now. "Your knee bothers you when we... before?" she asks, as she crawls up the length of me.

"God, woman. Every bit of me aches for you. Isn't that enough?" I kiss her then, to explain. "Actually, I don't feel the knee at all when I'm with you," I confide.

She laughs and leans into me.

And she is right... it is better the second time.

/ / / / / /

We are not so tired now. There is, I think, a chemical in us that arises from the knowledge that we should live as much as we can tonight. So, we touch and talk as we lie there, sated. We are empty and yet full.

And once I feel a bit rested, I go to draw her that bath I had promised.

I am kneeling there on the floor of the bathroom, my hand testing the water. I have just my shorts on. And she comes in, lovely and pleasingly disheveled, her gown open. Her look is of love's making, and I stare, I know, trying to save it all like a picture in my memory.

I catch her about the waist, my hand inside her robe. And kneeling before her, I pull her to me. I kiss the soft skin of her belly and her hand pushes lightly at me as if she would force me off... but gently.

"John, you shouldn't... "

"I will. But not now," I concede. I can tell she is discomfited.

I stand to help her into the water. Then I hang up her robe and sit by the tub.

"It's all a little strange," she admits, as I scoop water over her lazily.

"Just new," I assure her. "I want to believe... " The thought hurts, because I doubt our future so much, and so I trail off.

"You want to believe it can be like this. As the rule, not the exception?"

"I do. I really want to believe it."

She smiles at me with such confidence that doubt's hurt leaves me. I join her in the tub then, in answer to the silent tugging at my hand. We wash each other and trade only whispers, as if we were in a most holy place together.

The water has cooled and it is by some tacit agreement that we rise and dry each other. Her smile provokes mine as we move to reclaim our bed.

Before she can lie down, I straighten out the bedding and cover the soiled bottom sheet with a fresh one that I had stowed in the room beforehand.

"You've thought of everything," she muses, almost sadly. "You make me feel guilty, all the trouble you've gone to."

"You feel guilty? I have potentially compromised your position. I have most assuredly compromised _**you **_in society's eyes," I stress. "And you feel guilty?"

"Kiss me?" she asks with a wicked grin. "Take my mind off it?" She nips at my lips and then turns quickly to stretch out on the fresh sheets. I slide in next to her, fitting myself to her as if we have been together a dozen years.

"How are you, really?" I ask, as my hand skims over her lightly. I touch her as if I would soothe her intimate places.

"It stings," she admits. I am glad for her honesty.

"Still?" I groan in consolation. "I had hoped the bath would help." I pause then before I tell her. "Well, there is only one thing for it then."

"You are going to tell me the third time is even better?"

"I can promise." I kiss her. And then, as she sighs, I kiss her lower. And still lower.

"John? " she questions.

But I don't answer her. Not with words.

I am kissing the hollow at her hip now and running my hand down her smooth thigh. Her fingers push through my hair with a nervous sort of energy.

I can barely think for the emotion running through me. I believe I have left reality. But I know what to do. I shift then and pull her knee to me.

"Oh my... " I hear her say. Her voice is faint and ethereal as it reaches me.

As I find her center, she tenses. She calls out without words. She finds my touch overwhelming, I can tell, and I pull back.

I approach her more slowly now. My fingers ghost over her first and then my mouth follows. I know I moan in echo to the sounds that she makes. I love that I can feel her hips lift of their own accord, eager to feel more of my touch and tongue.

I smile now, even as I work at her. And in time I am rewarded. With her nails at my scalp. With her calling out. With my name panted over and over in a most delicious voice.

/ / / /

Morning comes despite all our wishes. And we dress quickly. Quietly. With smiles that are almost shy shared between us. At the door, I block her way. I watch her eyes travel from the row of gold buttons on my chest to my face before I speak.

"I love you," I tell her as I squeeze her hand.

"And I love you," she promises me, but my new look has her worried.

She knows I mean to break the spell and let reality in.

"Anna. As much as we ran head-to-head with Miss O'Brien, I would have thought you would have told me what really happened by now."

"What do you mean?"

"She is in America. And that was _**your**_ idea, you told me. But that was all you would divulge."

She tries to side-step me and at the same time she tells me, "I suggested it, is all."

"All right. Now, I am decidedly interested." But I know already, at least in part, what she will say.

"Miss O'Brien was a dirty piece of work," she says, with fierce eyes.

"Yes. Agreed."

"She was behind a mess of things, John. She tried to hurt almost every person in that household. And finally, we could do something about it (she spoke in the plural as if I operated still alongside her), because it was _Lady Mary_ she had threatened."

"You suggested she be sent to America because she threatened Lady Mary?" I ask knowingly, fixing her with my eye.

Anna is beautiful and unshirking there—her shoulders squared. "I _could_ have suggested she be sent to America because of Lady Mary. I most likely did it for other reasons."

She had done it, at least in part, for _me_. Anna had and always would stride straight into battle for me. But she would not risk unmanning me by saying such a thing directly.

A bitter, but now happy, part of me acknowledges that Vera would not have cleared her side of the table for me.

I shake my head and try to bite down on my smile.

"Are you angry with me?" she wants to know.

I kiss her first. Answer her second. "If you had only been avenging an old wrong... against _**me,**_ I would have told you it was unnecessary. Perhaps unseemly. But you removed a threat to Lady Mary." I pause to touch her hair. "You removed a woman who had become such a loose cannon that there is no telling who she may have plotted against next. You, my love, are a good friend. An excellent tactician. And a ruthless warrior—when needs be," I add as my finger now traces down her perfect nose. "And, God, a _wonderful_ lover."

Her look is sheepishly proud then as she launches herself at me. And I decide we have a minute more to enjoy such things.


	16. Chapter 16

**A/N: Thanks so much for sticking with me and this story. I had nothing on this chapter in my notes, so it took me longer to get this put together. This is the only story that I write with this alternating POV in first person. It is fun, but can feel unyielding when I realize that it is Anna's turn to speak and it is only John I hear. Or vice versa.**

**Anna's POV - beginning with the 'morning after'**

* * *

I am back to the London house before breakfast is finished. I race to my room to change, my head too full of panic over the hour and my pending duties to think too hard on where I've been and what I'd done.

It is on the stairs that Mr. Carson finds me. He gives me a look that is potent. And frozen in front of him, I wonder if he is more angry or worried. I can see so much in that's man's face this morning. His world is pulling apart at the seams, I think. And I can commiserate. The war. The world. It pulls me from joy every chance it gets.

It is the thought I had as I hustled through the changed streets of London on my way to the house. All of our former expectations are worth exactly nothing this morning. And tomorrow will be no different we know.

But as Carson's face grows more firm than weary, I see I should be more concerned with mundane things. Namely, our butler is not pleased with me. I ran circles round him to get the young ladies of the house to approve my being out over night. And that will not sit easy with him. I should have realized that.

I've been short sighted. There is something to pay for what I've done. And looking at that dear man, I see I am paying for it now. Years I've spent earning that man's respect, and I have spent that total it seems for my one night with John.

I would do it again, though. That's what the hum that runs through me tells me. I'm sadly unrepentant. I can't explain it. Being in love like this brings a feeling of entitlement. One I've never had before. It is dangerous and wrong. And I can't stop it.

"I'm on my way to help the young ladies..." I tell him.

"See that you are, Anna."

/ / / /

My mood rebounds and I am smiling as I walk the long corridor. I can remember each bit of our night. His hands on me - so sweet and gentle. The bewitching aspect of his voice is still with me.

But as I greet the ladies that morning I feel it fade and fast. The good things, any good feelings, are horribly temporary in our present world.

In response to my greeting and from their shared talk, I learn of the day's activities. Cousin Matthew is shipping out today and Lady Mary will be leaving after her breakfast to see him off. The young lady is clearly shaken by the prospect, although those emotions are all unspoken.

I think I sympathize. I find I am trying hard to do so. But I admit it is a distant sort of thing - because of the freshness of the night I've had... and mostly because of the promise that my man can not be deployed.

/ /

Two days later though, Carson tells me there are more changes coming. "Don't expect any more irregularities... like nights off," he warns with a near punishing look. "The Earl's regiment has their orders. It should not be a surprise," he says, as if these military workings are supposedly transparent to all of us. "There was that break in training. They stopped taking on the recruits because they mean to split the regiment. Half the men will go to France as an engineer unit and the others will continue the training functions here in England."

I must look like a dolt standing there silent, because he deigns to explain then. "We'll be closing the house. Packing the family and going back to Downton. Because the Earl is among those going with the troops to France as part of the commander's staff."

God, how blind I've become to everyone's pain but my own, I think with self reproach. I was never like this before, I swear. But I had lost sight of _**this**_ possibility. I'd been so worried for John and so glad when he told me that even if his unit was reformed, that he would stay with the training cadre.

I dread facing the young ladies tonight. I can't imagine their fear. Their father will be sailing for France in just two weeks. And this news comes so quick on the heels of their cousin Matthew's leaving.

Lady Sybil asks what I know about Branson, and I can only say that he drives for the commander. I know I am shaking my head numbly.

"And Bates?" Sybil asks. And she's watching me intently now.

I falter. I feel a guilty flutter in my stomach, and I swallow hard before I begin. "His mother has said his knee would keep him in England. His is well enough to serve the training unit. Not fit enough for what they will face...". I trail off, hot and flush, over the horrors I have alluded to. "I'm sorry," I stammer.

God, this is dirty business. And it shows no signs of ending. Eight months in and we are only just beginning this thing aren't we? All these units shuffling, deploying, redeploying. All these lists of young men lost.

I turn from stowing the brushes, and I see Lady Sybil looks uncharacteristically lost. "What are we going to do?" she asks.

Lady Mary closes her eyes a moment and finds her determination. "We see them off … as I did Matthew. And we let them know they have nothing to worry about back home. That's what we do. We tell father... that we love him. That we are waiting to see him again, and that it will all be all right in the end."

/ / / /


	17. Chapter 17

_Author's Note: Thank you all for continuing to read. This chapter was not going to be at all racy, but I received a request for 'fluff.' So, the warning here reads, "Beware of fluff, poetry, and sexual memories." Personally, poetry is what scares me the most. _

_John's POV  
_

/ / / / /

Walking smartly down the halls along the second floor of headquarters, I retrieve my watch in mid stride. I try to place where Anna will be at this hour. I wonder if she feels as changed... as charged, as I by what we've done.

.

"_I wonder, by my troth, what thou and I did till we loved?" _

.

I had read Donne before I had Anna in my life. But before I loved her, it just washed over me.

Shunning those thoughts for now, I turn at the door that bears the Colonel's name. I look at my watch again once I've surveyed the man's empty office. It is Monday morning and late (if you are a soldier). Surely, Lord Grantham must have returned to post by now.

I get word then from one of the privates that I am to meet the Colonel in his quarters. I give myself leave to feel a bit ill over that prospect and then pull myself together properly to walk over. It is just yesterday that I set his billets to rights, I had hoped not to revisit the scene so soon.

In his rooms, I am determined to look only at him. If I should let my gaze slip... _God help me_, my mind supplies, as my eyes do wander. I would bet that bed is still warm and humming with what we did. I am most decidedly thinking of Anna now. I can't help it.

I turn away from his bedroom, but I still see her. I feel her. Her hips rising to meet me. The thrill I felt at loving her. At knowing that no woman has ever wanted me so fiercely or welcomed me so beautifully. So innocently.

.

"_If ever any beauty I did see, which I desired, and got, 'twas but a dream of thee."_

.

The Colonel has, thankfully, turned his attention to his brief case.

As I move to begin my tasks in his bedroom, I hear her. The want in her voice as I pull back. The passion as I sink to her. It all rings through my head and makes me shiver.

I unpack his valise with shaky fingers, while Lord Grantham stands at the small desk in the outer room.

It is embarrassing, how little control I have over my thoughts. A quick glance at the pillows and I am lost again. I think on how I learned her, as she began to learn herself. I re-live the excitement of every act. It was all so brilliantly new.

Even the most simple caresses between us proved overwhelming. I remember the trembling that worked through her - and then through me.

The feel of shirts and shorts as I unpack somehow leads to recalling how the rise of her breasts registered against the pads of my fingers. She gasped, I remember, not expecting me to draw so much of her into my mouth. I suckled harder then, and when I heard her become undone, I released her. And oh, Lord, how she shuddered along the whole of her as I allowed my teeth to rasp against one taunt nipple in parting.

In those hours we spent here there was nothing else. No war. No expectations. No world. Just us. And bliss.

.

"_And now good morrow to our waking souls, which watch not one another out of fear;_

_For love all love of other sights controls, and makes one little room an everywhere."_

_.  
_

I shake myself. Coming back to my senses, I worry that I've stood frozen at His Lordship's dresser too long. I turn quickly to reach for the valise. But I fumble it, nearly dropping it to the floor.

The Colonel cannot help but note my distraction, I know. I sense his eyes on me. And finally, he asks, "What has you so preoccupied, Bates?"

I am about to admit something about the weekend, some oblique comment about 'personal concerns,' anything that will explain what he sees in me. I cannot lie and tell him there is nothing on my mind. But, I would never mention Anna by name and shame her so. In my paralytic preoccupation, I arrive at the perverse notion that I might say, '_Would you believe John Donne, Sir.'_

He sees me warring with what to say, and he holds up a hand to stop me. It is obvious he has reconsidered his question. "Don't, Bates. This is the point where, being the honorable man you are, you feel compelled to confess too much. And quite simply, I won't hear it." He pauses then, and I swear his sigh is audible. "I have no idea if your weekend involved a game of cards, a woman, or ...a voo doo ritual," he tells me. "Although, I am going to hope to God, it was not a voo doo ritual," he finishes with what has become a rare smile.

"No, sir."

"We are in this war together, as much as two men are in anything together. Our last war, God willing, Bates. And I've just come back from a marvelous two days with my family. I owe that to you and your persistence."

"If I have done some good by you, sir, I am sincerely glad to hear it."

"And if my leaving did some good by you, I am just as heartened," he says, almost slyly.

He continues then after throwing down the papers he had been holding. "This training holiday we've had, you know it marks a change, Bates. We no longer have that flood of recruits we did. We need to get ready for deployment. New equipment, everything, is waiting for us to load at the docks. We need to get the headquarters packed up. And then the men deploying will get a short leave ...and we will be gone."

"Yes, sir," I merely say.

"A little more than half the regiment will be heading for duty on the continent. I will be going to France." Our eyes meet then in question. "You will not," he tells me levelly.

"Because of my leg."

He nods. And I return the gesture. "Webster from Operations while take the spot in the Adjutant's office." A long silence stretches on then while he circles his desk to stand closer to me.

"Bates," he begins, seeming wary. "Do you want to tell me... If there is a chance that I can help you... Once I am deployed, I can't do much for you."

"I don't understand, sir."

He sighs, suggesting he doubts my words. "This weekend I was fairly assailed by my daughters. Apparently, I am blind and unappreciative to those we owe so much to and those it would be so easy to help."

"Sir?"

"My daughter Sybil insists that you and Anna..." He trails off.

I am struck dumb, but he can likely tell by the look on my face that I understand what he means.

"Just 'yes' or 'no' will do, Bates."

"Yes, sir," I answer him firmly. "We want to marry."

"But there is a legal matter that is unresolved," he ventures. "Otherwise, you would have married her already, that being your inclination."

I blanch. Somehow I manage the words. "The divorce decree has been inexplicably held up in Northallerton."

He sees my discomfort and is most kind about it. "I do not mean to embarrass you. I would not bring it up at all, Bates. Forgive me. But these are extraordinary times, and I am leaving." There is that fear and finality in the words. "If a letter from me or a telephone call would speed up these proceedings, let me do it, please. Given that it is in Northallerton, I may have some sway with them."

"Lady Sybil is entirely too perceptive," I say as I nod and allow myself a small smile.

"When she wants to be." He pauses. "The paperwork is all in order and it is just a bureaucratic delay?" he asks.

"Yes. I have not seen the woman in many years now. She left papers with my mother that allowed me to file for a divorce, but things have not moved forward." I say all this with as much dignity as I can muster, because the papers Vera would leave could only be ones that outlined that I was the injured, cuckolded party.

He merely nods. "I will put some pressure on whatever self-important magistrate is holding these things up."

"I am reluctant to involve..."

"I know," he says, as if tired not just with life of late, but with my stoic behavior. "But my daughters will not forgive me if I do not do this... for Anna. Mary would have me believe it is very nearly a sort of life debt that she owes the woman. And I understand those sort of things."

I nod. And I think he and I share some bitter memories in that moment.

It is not a life debt. I had not ever truly saved his life, not unless I was busy trying to save my own as well in the process. I had pulled him out of some scrapes when we were in South Africa. Yes. And my ears had proved quicker at sussing out incoming artillery. That had certainly proved a helpful thing a time or two.

But mostly, what he undoubtably remembered was that on one clear, hot day, I had spared the man the nightmares that I would always carry.

...

_I knew what we were in for even before we got to the refugee camp. I could smell the death a half mile off and, of course, I had the advantage of having heard things through non-commissioned channels. _

_Lord Grantham had been told the tented camps that held the Boer civilians needed 'engineering fixes' to bring them into compliance with the Fawcett Commission's recommendations. But I knew that this particular place was one of the worst for starvation and disease. The engineers were being brought in to improve the facilities and the sanitation. And to bury the recent dead, most of whom were children. _

_I had seen a few children's corpses on an earlier detail. Small and horribly thin little things they were. They were the painfully distinct makings of a nightmare. _

_And not what a young man with small daughters should see. _

"_There is no need for us to both go, sir," I told him firmly, but quietly, at the gate. _

"_Are you TELLING me to remain here, Sergeant?" He was obviously surprised by the insubordination. I grabbed the corporal behind me and gave him orders to take the rest of the men from our detachment in and to report to the camp commander. Once the young captain and I were alone, I answered his question._

"_Yes, sir. That is what I am telling you," I said both carefully and plainly. "There are things a man, a father, needn't see. Please, sir." _

...

"Please, sir," I echo today. "I do not want you to feel any sense of debt. But... I will take your assistance. For Anna's sake."

"I give it as much for yours."

/

The poem quoted in part is **"The Good-Morrow" by John Donne.**


	18. Chapter 18

**Some of you are too perceptive... or my plot is just THAT easy to read.**

**If it buys me a pass on the lateness of this chapter, I will mention that we have been doing whooping cough (x5) here. Vaccines are apparently less than effective! Weeeeeee. Hack HAck HAck!**

/ / / / / / / /

Anna's POV

God help me, when I see that man again, I will tell him no more promises. No more assurances of what will happen or of what the army will do. John has not managed to get any of it right.

The regiment took him back when he had told me that would never happen. He is still married to Vera after a divorce seemed so close at hand. But, I had felt secure in the knowledge that _at least_ he would not ever be deployed.

Sequestered in my room at the London house, I crush the letter I've just received from him. I bite down on some less than sterling language, and I shove my chair... hard. Webster, the sergeant who should take John's place on the Earl's staff, has come up sick. Very sick. The man seems to have contracted pneumonia on his leave.

And John, of course, being John, has told Lord Grantham that he will deploy with him rather than see the regiment left in the lurch. That man's loyalties may run a mite too deep, I think with venom.

Foolishly, I believe that I can make it through dinner knowing what I do, and that no one will be the wiser. I am transparent, of course. My heart is on my sleeve in less compelling situations. In this one, I am a barely contained maelstrom, I fear. Mrs. Jones, the cook here in London, reaches for me as I pass by the kitchen door.

"Anna?" she says to me. "What is it?"

And I know my look is so pale that she is not even surprised that I can't or won't explain.

…

Another man should be put in John's spot. Someone who is fit to march and move the way John still wasn't. Or the headquarters could damn well do without one sergeant, I seethe to myself. I can't stand still. And I won't wait to see if I can get away from the house some other time before he leaves the country.

Before I know what I have done, I am standing under a street light, confused and doubting my decision to go to John. I am startled when I hear my name.

"What are you doing here, Mr. Carson?" I ask, feebly.

As if I fear he will bodily return me to my quarters, I am backing away as I tell him, "I can't go back to the house yet. I need to..."

"I know," he says with a grudging rumble in his chest. I find a sadness I had not expected in his eyes. "Mrs. Jones took hold of me. Told me I should bring you back... _**once**_ I'd made sure you were able to do what you need to. It isn't safe for you to be running about at night all across London, Anna. 'Make sure she gets to see her man,' Mrs. Jones told me. 'Then bring Anna back. And don't worry about punishing her. The world has done that in spades.'" He pauses. Waits in vain for me to respond. "Anna?"

I'm not moving. Not answering him. I have no rational response to what Mr. Carson is saying.

"There is some news concerning Sergeant Bates, I take it," Carson says in a near pitying tone. "Do you mean to go to the barracks?"

I nod, numbly.

"We will need a taxi then. Come along."

"I don't understand how all of this could happen," I finally manage. And I don't know if I mean John leaving or my walking out of the house on this desperate errand – an errand that somehow netted me our formidable butler as my squire.

But Carson answers me as if he understands. "No none of us do. There is a world full of people..."

I don't truly hear his words. But his voice is good and strong. Fair and kind. I smile at the nervous emotion I see in his normally solid hands. And the romantic in me hopes that there is a woman in his life who would bolt to his side the way I have run for John.

I thank him when I hear his voice pause. I smile as best I can. And we are there suddenly, stepping from a taxi and walking for the gate.

A hand to my arm sends me to stand aside, away from the sentry's curiosity. Carson looks determine enough, but still pulls himself up to a more impressive height. He informs the corporal at the gate that he has come from Lord Grantham's house with a message for Sergeant Bates.

I am ashamed that it has come to this. I am not even able to stand still, I pace the walkway – counting my steps to 50 and back down again. I look to the gate to see Mr. Carson escorted inside by the runner.

…

The moments when I see a flustered John round the gate blur. I don't know when I've seen him move so fast or wear such a set to his face.

"What have I done?" he murmurs, as he catches me around the waist.

Our heads fall together, and it is apologies and tears and explanations only half managed.

Finally then he tells me what he feels he must. "It was foolishness to ever have thought that Webster could have handled the assignment. And with him sick it only seemed right ..."

I won't object, but the sound that rises from my chest betrays me.

"It hadn't seemed right that I should wear the uniform and not step up and do my job, Anna."

"Lord, but I am sick of hearing the word 'right' fall from your beautiful lips. But I know that the colonel needs you," I say flatly, but with plain doubting.

He shakes his head at me. And finally looks up at the sky as if unwillingly amused. I think, perhaps, that I have come off as sounding jealous of Lord Grantham. And the idea does leave me smiling as well.

"It is going to be complete chaos when we land, Anna. My office has so much to oversee. So much to get done in support of the entire regiment. You'll think I'm a self-important bastard, but I figured it was a sign when Webster came up so sick."

In a hush of words we explain it all back and forth. He is so confident. So sure. And I cling a little tighter to him. In grudging terms, I tell him that I am proud of him. That I trust him. And then I tell him it all again with every bit of love I feel when I look at him.

"Don't think so poorly of Lord Grantham for dragging me off, Anna. He's written a letter to the magistrate who's had my divorce decree in his office for months. It will see some action now."

He pulls me around a corner then until we are in the darkness afforded us by the bricks of the camp gate.

And for a very practical man, he is near foolishness then. In between kisses he weaves me a story of what our life will be like. A trip to the sea side. A place of our own somewhere. White curtains float in on the breeze. There will be days spent in bed making love in broad day light.

It feels like more than promises. He is that talented. And in between his words, his kisses leave me no time to worry.

"You'll forgive me for coming down here?" I fear I am the typical reactionary female in everyone's eyes that night. If not his, then most likely in Mr. Carson's. Most definitely to that corporal with the disapproving look.

"Forgive you? Only if you marry me." He sighs, and his smile is sad and lopsided then. "Forgive _me_, Anna. And know that you are the one right thing in my life." It is the best deception we can manage of ourselves then – those long kisses and plying touches that follow, but must quickly end.

"I don't blame you for coming down," he whispers. "Mr. Carson made it quite clear to me that I had not expressed myself very well in my letter to you."

I look at John a long time then. I think about this, my white knight, the man under my finger tips. But I consider, as well, that other man – the one whose part it is to pace nervously now. The incomparable, tenderhearted butler who has brought me here and taken up my part.

/ / / / /


	19. Chapter 19

_Smut warning. But then, I have done my best to have a bit of spice in nearly every chapter. _

_Can you tell I love Carson? Sigh._

* * *

_**Bates POV**_

_**... ... ... ... ... **_

I am not pleased to hear a knock at my door in the billets at this hour. The runner announces himself and tells me he has someone with a message from Lord Grantham. In my haste and confusion, I pull open the door without even waiting to find my tunic.

The private backs away, although he does not need to for me to see the familiar form of Downton's butler behind him. I miss a beat, I think, at the sight of him here and looking so out of place.

"Thank you, Danvers. Get back to the gate now," I say flatly. I turn my attention then to Mr. Carson. "What is it?" I ask sounding worried. I make a step toward him. "A message from Lord Grantham? But..."

"The boy misunderstood, and I did not see the need to correct him," the sly man tells me. "It's Anna. She's here."

My face betrays me then. "Why did you bring her?"

"I don't know that I would term it _that_ way," he stresses, "as, I believe, she was coming whether or not I was of any help."

"I'm sorry." I shake my head and move quickly back through my open door to grab my tunic. I am feeling agitated suddenly. "My letter set her off," I assess.

"It did," he too easily confirms, his eyebrows high.

I could almost laugh at the blessed man's brevity and insight. For a bachelor, he is a rare creature in his understanding and fondness for women, I think.

"I was planning on coming by the house tomorrow night." My voice is more guilty than I had hoped it to be. "Truly."

"What did you write... if I might ask, Sergeant Bates? Did you tell her you would see her before you left?" the man said with a touch of irritation and impatience.

"You have to understand, Mr. Carson," I told him as I began closing my buttons. "After everything she has been through over me, I didn't want to promise any more. I _intended_ to come by the house. But I couldn't _promise_ her one more thing."

The butler's look is sad and tight as he nods. "Go on, Sergeant. Go to her. She's down by the sentry at the west gate."

Still managing the last of my buttons, I turn down the hall and head for the exit.

Outside, I round the gate and groan. It hurts to see the result of my idiocy, to see Anna here after my letter left her no hint of when we would see each other again.

I wrap her up in my arms despite the audience. Her mood is apparent in the way she yields to my hold on her. She isn't angry. At least not any more. But she is tired and feeling abused by the world, no doubt.

I move her to a spot more private and continue my apologies. I am amazed. But then she always manages that. She forgives me. Oh, there is a hint of sternness to her still. But I need that from her, I think.

And she kisses me then. We whisper as our foreheads rest together. I tell her in every way that I can imagine that I love her, that we will be together. I try to explain that I have to go with the regiment, and that it is simply the right thing to do. Tonight she is accepting of what I need to say. She is still a woman with her own opinion, but she is placing herself on my side.

"I can get away for a few hours on the day after tomorrow. Can you meet me?" I ask.

"If I haven't worn out any good will remaining in Mr. Carson. But, Where?"

My fingers trace at her cheek as I answer her. "Where would you like me to take you? We can go out, get a lovely meal somewhere or meet at my mother's?"

"A room," she tells me simply. And she does not say a hotel room, something discrete. Some place where we can be alone and intimate again. But that is what she means, I know, even before her fingers dig into my sides.

I nod, unwilling and unable to discuss it further.

"I love you," I whisper. "For so long now."

"I can't remember not loving you," she tells me.

We ease apart, and she roots herself there through some effort, I think. I know it is with effort that I release her hand and turn to walk to the man who has squired her here tonight.

I square my shoulders and take a breath meant to calm me. "Mr. Carson. Thank you." I extend my hand, and he does me the honor of taking it firmly.

"My pleasure, Sergeant Bates."

"It's not easy for me to go. But knowing you will be there at Downton makes it easier. You are a good man, Mr. Carson." I worry that he has spent so long hearing he is a good butler, that he has gone without knowing what an admirable soul he is.

"We'll look after her," he assures me. "We will. As we must all look after each other."

/ / /

In little over a day later, I meet her on the street in town. I give her the room key, and I tell her to head up without me. I'll go around back and be up in a few minutes. I wait for her expression to show some regret over this, over the unseemliness to our meeting. But there is nothing from her but a smile. A nod. And the word, "Hurry."

From the moment I touch her in that room, there is no use pretending anything else is possible. We will make love first, talk later.

I try not to rush things. But I don't have any words I trust right now. I want to say it all with my hands and my mouth on her skin. I want to know she understands that I love her. Because I do, in ways words cannot explain. I need her to know that I'm sorry for everything. For leaving. For time wasted. For fate and distance.

I want her to know I am in awe of her. Her beauty and her strength. In awe at the way she loves me.

"You make me a better man," I whisper.

She smiles as if she would deny it. Her voice wavers, and she thinks better of trying to force any words. So, she takes my hand to raise it to her lips. And then she kisses me in earnest.

Anna is the one who moves us to stand by the bed.

Our pace is too fast and still half the time of my pulse. My buttons hang undone and her hands race to smooth over my chest. I kiss her, distract her, and reach for the hem of her dress. She lets me undress her until her smile tells me she will have her turn now.

And I delight in the way her small hands work my uniform trousers open. She is so different sometimes from the woman that welcomed me to Downton years ago. But she remains rare and enchanting, honorable and enduring even with the changes.

At last I ease her to lie on the mattress, and she arches under my touch. Her exquisite legs yield in welcome even as her finger tips make demands upon my skin. She wants me, and I so desperately want to be exactly what she needs.

"For so long," she pants. "I have tried to remember just how you felt." She pushes back against my thigh as I half cover her now. "For so long."

If it was not obvious from the first time I held her hand or kissed her, it is obvious now as I move to be inside her. We are made for each other. Only together is life this sweet and hallowed.

I see it in her eyes first. A soft sort of leaving there. Her body tenses then; she cries out. And all at once, she weakens. I love success. She is my prize. Her cries. Her pleasure. God, I wish that I could bottle this. Hear it again at will.

Somehow, I am the one that manages to do this to her, I marvel.

I let go. Let it all claim me. The physical storm is blinding. The emotional rush is both a discovery and a welcome.

I am king in a moment. Exultant. I don't call the word to mind so much as it leaps to me. It is a feeling a man knows in his chest, and the word was coined for this: the perfect sense gained in the right woman's arms.

/


	20. Chapter 20

**_a/n: Sniff! This is it. The last chapter. It sort of snuck up on me. I wasn't sure how much more I had to go after the last installment and I found it all tied itself together quite nicely in this one chapter._**

**_This was the first Downton Abbey fanfic I started. I quickly fell in love with the community here. I have so enjoyed all of your correspondence and comments. And I have absolutely loved reading the stories here. _**

**_I told myself I HAD to get this done before the second series was broadcast in the States. Phew. Did it. Just in time. Given the snippets that I have heard about events in series 2, I really prefer my little world here!_**

**_Thank you for making it to the end of this story! _**

* * *

Anna's POV

/

We are at the train station, a wave of women in our muted wools. The men in their khaki dot the platform that we seem to own. There is no true military order here. This scene belongs to the ones being left. And it is a time for all the sergeants to turn a blind eye.

I don't look, but I know somewhere, Branson lurks at the edge of the railway building waiting for his chance to say good bye to Lady Sybil. A hundred yards behind me, the Crawley women are taking turns embracing the Earl.

This platform is the whole of existence right now to my mind. There is enough hurt and suffering at this station to deafen the world. But I have my fingers laced through John's and my head at his chest. I could try, but I know I would find I couldn't bring myself to notice another thing.

"Come home soon. Please, don't take any chances." But other than that, there is almost nothing I can think to say. And so we merely stand close together, and I try hard not to cry.

I let him go as the second call to board goes up. Still, he leans to me for one last kiss. "Take care of yourself. For me," he whispers. "It will be a different world when I'm back, for us, at least. They should be able to replace me in a few weeks. You'll see."

I ignore his latest prediction. "I love you," I tell him as intently as I can.

His words and tenor echo mine exactly.

I wait, watching him walk for the train. And I smile despite my mood. He is an amazing man, and in every sense that matters, he is mine. Oh, God. How I will miss him. In whole and in part. The strength in him. The way he loves me. The sweep of his hair. Even the breadth of his back.

I wait, my eyes locked on him, until he is in the doorway of the train. And I'm rewarded. He turns and there is his smile. The beautiful dimples. A touch, just a touch, of that cheeky look that I always thought was only meant for me and our conspiracies.

I ask myself, 'why?' again and again as the train winds out of sight. Not just 'why' for John. But for every man pulled down that track. For all the trains that went before. Why must the world do this?

That is what we women who are left behind all want to know.

… … …

I am back at the London house. It is a bare two days later, and we are shutting up this place. Cold through and barely moving, I am packing trunks like an automaton or a wind up doll that's not quite run down. Leaving here feels horrid. It shouldn't matter where I wait. But there is that feeling that we are giving up ground. That I am moving further away. Packing this house feels like an act of mourning.

There are no believable assurances. That is the only assurance that I have. The army sent him to France when John told me he and his knee were in no way up to it.

His final prediction had been that he would only need to get the regimental offices established, and then he would be returned to England. Another man would be put in his spot. Someone who was fit to march and move the way John wasn't.

But John's stay has been extended.

"Still, I'm not in harm's way," his letter assured me. "His Lordship and I are managing things here behind lines." I re-read every letter from him every night before I close my eyes.

I never know when I'll hear from him now, the mail is so slow and unreliable. Sometimes there are three letters in a short span, and then, at other times, there is nothing for 10 days at a stretch.

The papers are more reliable. But the news is all bad. Late April, we read of a new horror. Poison gas. At Ypres, the Germans used chlorine gas for the first time on the Western Front.

Another morning comes, and I rise and consult my calendar. It is an unhappy milestone. He has been in France for 5 weeks now.

I feel haunted here at Downton without him. I touch the spot where the necklace lies as I finish one set of chores, and then I move to begin again in the next room. I make my attempts to mesmerize myself with sheets and the order of objects in this place. And sometimes, it works. The nights are more difficult. Alone in the dark, in that tiny bed, I can't help but worry. I almost welcome the company and the hustle come morning.

… … …

It is early yet and the start of John's 7th week in France. Daisy flies into our dining space, her face flush with news she is bursting to tell.

"The new boy's just told me there's been a telegram," I hear Daisy say, in a wicked hush.

"Mind you keep out of people's way, Daisy," Mrs. Patmore warned. "And don't be listening for word of William outside the doors."

"It isn't about William. I heard Mrs. Crawley say it was about His lordship and Mr Bates..."

I turn and try to leave. The room is swimming and there is nothing but a rush of noise. The last words I understood just echo in my ears. All I can think is that I'll make my way upstairs and get the telegram myself.

I think I might fall, but I find something solid. It's Carson, I know at once. He is holding me now and saying over and over, "He's alive, Anna. Shh. The two of them are alive."

And from behind him I hear Mrs. Hughes chastising Daisy. "Get out of here, girl. Go on."

"As soon as I heard, I came down," a rushed sounding Carson tells me. "I don't know how Daisy got here first. Curse the girl. But, listen to me, Anna, and let's sit down."

Someone is patting my back and telling me to sit. The request is repeated. A hand covers mine and squeezes now.

"How is Her Ladyship?" Mrs. Hughes asks the butler quickly at the edge of my hearing.

"The girls are with her, and she asked they be left alone," Carson whispers.

Mrs. Hughes is at my side, I realize, having cleared the room of everyone else.

I have made it into a chair. And once I open my eyes to his, Mr. Carson tells me, "The Earl and Sergeant Bates were with the regimental commander at a forward command post, and there was German artillery. They are both in hospital. That's all we know, Anna. Take heart. Take heart."

…...

A hospital in France. That was all the information we had in those early hours. Slowly then there is more to the story, and Lady Grantham is good to always include her husband's valet in her inquiries. She is also good enough to often call for me when there was word, so she could relay it to me directly. I am sure I learn more about how John was doing than I otherwise would have.

Even though I am doomed to getting second hand information,when I correspond with Mrs. Bates, I find that I was hearing more than she.

"Her Ladyship went straight to bed with a head ache, but she asked me to tell you what she knows," Mrs. Hughes explains so solemnly. "The tunnel works caved in up at the front. They were inspecting positions when the artillery caught them. So, they have no shrapnel injuries. But the Earl has broken a leg from when the timber shoring fell in. Mr. Bates has broken some ribs. Fool man used that broad back of his to hold up the entrance to the tunnel as it was falling down, so that they could get His Lordship and their driver out. So, of course, he was the one it all fell on."

I write him in care of the hospital where the two men _should_ be, but I hear nothing back. Lady Grantham calls me to her two weeks later, and she tells me that she has heard nothing as well.

….

Finally, we get word that they are headed home.

They return together on a hospital ship that we women are not allowed to meet. It is strange our kinship. We are worlds apart, Her Ladyship and I, but here we sit. I on one side of the hospital hallway, she on the other.

"They should be here by now," she says, showing her nerves.

"Yes. I wish they were," I tell her. I stand and pace a bit, quite unable to sit another moment.

The doors push open at the end of the corridor, and there are two gurneys. And then two more. Lady Grantham is on her feet now, too. We press against the walls to allow the orderlies to pass with the beds. We both note with a look to each other that these first men are not the ones we have waited for.

Surely, the next set are, her eyes seem to say to me.

We recognize a bit of Lord Grantham's baritone in the same instant. And we smile. He is in a stretcher, but inclined and talking. It is quite heartening to see him awake and seeming well.

He manages, "Anna," as he is pushed past, but his eyes are on her. His wife falls in with the procession and is gone with him.

I walk to meet John then. It is him, I can tell, with something more than my eyes.

I am looking at a free man, I muse, although he is looking worse for the wear. Still, the final notice on his divorce came a few weeks earlier. It had been delivered in care of his mother. And she had in turn notified me. I sent him a letter as soon as I heard and I know his mother wrote him as well.

So, soon, very soon, God willing, I will marry him, and he can be mine to care for properly.

As he is brought closer, it is hard to rectify this. That this is him. His hair without the pomade. And longer. The pounds he's lost. The gray color to him.

I follow while he is transferred to the ward bed. I keep my distance until the nurse tells me I may have a few minutes and only that.

I can't say a word, I find. I am afraid that if I try, I'll merely cry. And so I am just standing here, pushing at his hair and biting my lip.

"I love you, Anna."

I answer him and choke on the words.

"I'm fine, don't fuss," comes a rougher version of his voice.

"I'm not fussing," I manage to tell him. "And you are not fine." But I give him a thin smile.

He will be on convalescent leave once he is discharged from the hospital here. That is his plan, he tells me. We will have to see what the doctors and the Army actually have in mind for him, I think.

"I'll be up and around in no time. The ribs don't even bother me any more. It just the foot."

"What are you doing Tuesday then?" I ask.

"What did you have in mind?" He is smiling, as if we were enjoying a joke.

But I am all seriousness now. "I thought, if you'd still have me, we could get married."

I can tell from his look that he is feeling lost.

"The divorce," I explain. "Your mother got the decree 3 weeks ago. She wrote you."

"I haven't seen any mail in weeks," he says with a catch in his voice. "Nothing caught up with me at the field hospital." He shakes his head. "You read the papers over. You're sure? Quite sure?"

"Sure. "

"Monday, Anna," he tells me with a beautiful grin. "Make it Monday. Hell, I'll marry you every day next week."

/ / / / / EPILOGUE / / / / / /

He married me just the once. He joked that was enough as he had spent so long dreaming of the day, that it was as if he had done it a hundred times over.

I wrote my parents a very, very long letter finally. And with the last bit of his convalescent leave, we travelled out to see them. I was nervous when we did, but my family saw in John what I had always seen. The heart in him. The honor. The honesty. That last morning there my mother sat with me as I packed. She sees something more, she told me. A devotion for me that eases her worries.

We are with the training unit, and he has been promoted. He is a Company Sergeant Major Instructor now. Promotions come fast these days with the holes left in every unit. There are so many dead and wounded. And every time I thank God for our luck, I pray for all the others.

It was September of 1915 when they moved him to Aldershot so that he could work with the trainees. And it is May 1916 now. How is it this war continues? And where are the Americans when we need them?

Despite the war, my man has delivered. I will give him that. We had our trip to the sea side when we had our two days at Brighton. There's a place of our own (even if it is on loan to us from the Army). White curtains (a present from my parents) push into our room on the breeze. And there most assuredly are days spent in bed making love in broad day light.

I realized I was pregnant about 4 months after I moved into the married quarters with him. He has been such a mixture of joy and concern since we had the doctor's confirmation.

John has two days off right now, and he means for us to spend them here in our rooms. He doesn't want me traveling about, although I tell him, I feel fine.

We are having a lovely, decadent day of it, having only risen from bed when we wanted to, only to tumble back in once breakfast was done. I think he means to spend the whole of his weekend like this, spooned behind me, his hand cradling my stomach.

"What did you think when you met me? You were so good to me... from that very first day," John says. "What is it you saw?"

"I could tell you were worth the chance," I tell him earnestly. "That much I could see, right off. And it didn't take long to know that there was something in us that was in answer to the other."

"Mmm. You were always the smart one," he whispers. "I was the one who's predictions always seemed off."

"Mind you remember that," I tease back.

"Oh, I shall. I shall try. But what if I forget?" he asks with a wicked grin.

I roll over to push at John's shoulder, to force him to his back. With a tug at the covers, I am able to climb astride him. "Forget and I shall be forced to pin you down and explain it all to you." I run my hands up his chest to then pull his arms over his head. I lean into his wrists and kiss him deeply.

He chuckles then, ruining my seduction. But I don't mind.

"It's amazing how forgetful an old soldier can be," he tells me with something shy of innocence.

"Well, we're both lucky I'm as patient as I am then."


End file.
